Here is a copy of Brave New World, the first thing I’d ever given him. It was new when I bought it. Now it’s lovingly worn, having been read countless times.

Here is a receipt for Skee-Ball on the boardwalk.

Here is a pair of broken sunglasses, his that I’d accidentally sat on and smashed.

Here is the funky pair I’d bought to replace the broken ones, bright green and ridiculous.

Here are these things. Here are all these little things, inconsequential to others, but everything to me. I find more and more and more. A button. A pin. Notes and stubs and photos and bits of strings and fabric and everything. The farther I dig, the deeper it goes until I am surrounded by him and me, until I am engulfed by everything that made us who we are.

This tin.

This test score.

This birthday candle.

This Christmas ornament.

This PETA flyer.

This broken bracelet.

It’s all us. Every bit. Every piece. Every part.

Eventually, I reach the bottom. My face is wet, and I do nothing to wipe my eyes, even as they blur. It’s not as hard to breathe as I thought such a thing would be.

There’s one last thing in the box. Another folded note.

I take it out. Open.

I meant what I said that day when we first met.

It’s inevitable, Tyson.

Your friend, always,

Dom

I place the note back at the bottom. I pick up all the pieces of us and place them back into the box. Eventually, it’s all inside and I put the first note back on top. I close the lid. I trace over the leaves in the wood.

This belonged to my mother. It’s one of the few things left of her.

His mother, who had died so unfairly at the hands of his abusive father. Dom tried to stop him. Had even stabbed him a few times. But it was already too late.

He’d screamed then. He’d screamed for hours, until he could scream no more, his vocal cords ruptured. It went on for hours and hours. He only stopped when it became physically impossible for him to continue.

And now he’d given part of me to her. Her name had been Crystal, I think.

I don’t… no.

It doesn’t matter now. How I feel. How I don’t want to feel. What I did. What he did. What we didn’t do. None of it matters.

He’s Dom. I’m Ty.

We’re inevitable. That’s all that matters.

Part Three: Just Breathe

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart:

I am, I am, I am.

—Sylvia Plath

19. Where Tyson Goes to Helena Handbasket’s Sex Dungeon

“YOU SURE you have everything?” Bear asks me for the billionth time. He looks into the back of Otter’s SUV worriedly, apparently sure he’s going to see that I’ve somehow missed a pair of socks or one of the four hundred tiny little bottles of travel shampoo he thought I needed for some reason. “You don’t want to forget something on the road. Who knows when you’ll be able to stop next?”