How to say it: The sunrise could cripple your heart, the lake glistens better than the eyes of all men, the moon is larger than all moons combined and stands on the mountains each night to keep watch over my body?

“It’s great. I love it here, I really do.”

“Well, you know we miss you.”

“Tell her we miss her!” comes my mother’s voice from the background.

“Do you want me to put your mother on?”

“No, not right now. Next time.”

I climb into bed alone, the world vibrating around me, the silence and moonlight. I picture again the flash of his eyes.

ALREADY, LOVE HAS SEIZED ME. A NEW light prisms through my chest. I move through my daily motions drugged, dazed, the world tinged by the sensation: Pink trees, pink grass, pink clouds, pink sky, the sweetness of the world finally shown to me.

◆Love can occur in a fifth of a second

◆Falling in love produces several euphoria-inducing chemicals, stimulating 12 areas of the brain at the same time

◆One symptom of hypopituitarism, a rare disease, is the inability to feel the rapture of love

◆Upon looking at a new love, the neural circuits typically associated with social judgment are suppressed

A FEW NIGHTS LATER, I CANNOT SIT STILL. I walk the road through the small town to the small bar. The small bar is built of thin metal, even the door, which I push open.

Inside, two men hunch over their beers. I sit down two stools away and order a drink.

“You’re the new city girl, huh?” one of the men asks.

“I guess that’s me.”

“You won’t last long out here.”

The other man cackles.

“Last one only made it three months. Might’ve had your cabin if I recall.”

“Sure did,” the other one coughs.

In the silence after, I stare into my glass. The sad song my father used to play in the car comes through the jukebox in the corner. A sad feeling floods my heart, and my eyes well up with tears. I blink them back.

The door opens and the man from the grocery store steps in. The air exits my lungs and I cough as he takes the stool to the left of me.

“Rye,” he says, and the glass appears. He keeps one hand in his jacket pocket, the other around the rye.

We sit like that for a moment, sipping our drinks, before he turns to me.

“You’re the new girl.”

“That’s what they keep calling me.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Cassie. Yours?”

“Henry.”

“Nice to meet you.”

We don’t shake hands.

“Where’d you move from?”

“The city.”

“You got the red cabin, then?”

“That’s me.”

“I saw you moving in. Few days ago, right?”