At the motel we ordered Chinese. I overate and then my stomach cramped. We’d gotten separate rooms but it felt too lonely to use them both. I was afraid of the quiet. I ate my fortune cookie without reading the slip. We turned on the TV and watched a show about dinosaurs. When we turned it off, the screen crackled with static before it went black. We could see our faces, side by side and tired. I wanted grief to fill every part of me but it didn’t, only struck me dumb whenever I tried to turn away from it.

“You can sleep here if you want to,” I told him. “I want you to.”

He unbuckled his belt. “I can’t sleep in my pants,” he said. “But you already knew that.”

Here was a man who wouldn’t hurt me even when I’d practically begged him, over and over again. Now I could see inside his purest wound. He curled around my spine and cried. I’d never felt a man cry. I’d seen it, but I’d never felt it, not against my skin. He didn’t touch me like a lover, only like a boy who’d lost his mother, though there was something else in the grip of his fingers, like we could take our terrible lives and find a stupid, saving symmetry. It’s okay to let another person take care of you in the dark. Was that it? I wasn’t trying to take it for myself, the stab in his heart. I wasn’t even trying to make it better. I just wanted to lie next to his dreams. Don’t think I haven’t seen it, she’d said. Lord knows I’ve seen it. I could see it now too.

Acknowledgments

I’d like to offer deepest thanks to Andrew Wylie and Jin Auh, whose faith and work found this book a home, and I am lucky that this home was with Amber Qureshi, whose huge heart and hawkish eye made it better than I’d imagined it could be. She has been passionate about this novel from the beginning, exquisitely attentive to its language and its citizens, generous with her enthusiasm and her intellect.

Thanks to all my teachers—especially Charlie D’Ambrosio, who gave me courage and a true beginning. I am grateful to Brigid Hughes at A Public Space for publishing my first work.

I have been lucky in my friends: those who have shaped this book—Aria Sloss, Nam Le, Jake Rubin—and those who have simply shaped me: Abby Wild, Eve Peters, Amalia McGibbon, Charlotte Douglas, Harriet Clark, Miranda Featherstone, Kiki Petrosino, Nina Siegal, Julia Wong, Colleen Kinder, Louisa Thomas, Margot Kaminski, Meg Swertlow, Emily Matchar, Josh Gross, Micah Fitzerman-Blue, Ryan Carr, Nathalie Wolfram, and Jim Weatherall. Particular thanks to Katherine Marino, guide from the sanctum onward.

Thank you to Sam Cross—who knows, I hope, what he means to me.