My ears ring. I’m dizzy. The sunshine is suddenly as blinding as the flashbulb on a paparazzo’s camera and I feel clammy in the damp air.

Aimee. Here. Alive. And because I just bodychecked her, I know she’s solid, real, and in front of me.

The samenesses of her feel like tiny, unexpected shocks as I notice them, rolling over me one after the other. Her height. Her hair color. Her eye color. Simple facts you’d put on a driver’s license, and yet these are the things that strike me the most. She has loomed so large in my memory that it’s odd to see her stand at merely five foot six. To see her hair color, that particular honeyed brown that feels specific to exactly her and only her. The color of her eyes that’s somewhere between blue and green—a color our poetry teacher in college once called the color of pond scum, which made us laugh until we almost peed ourselves. Seeing her irises again for the first time in over a decade, I realize how true and darkly beautiful a description it actually was.

It’s the humanity of her that catches me off guard. It’s kind of how it feels to meet a celebrity in real life. Like a real celebrity. An icon. I’ve seen Cate Blanchett’s face a hundred times, blown up to the size of the IMAX screen at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, so it felt strange when I stood next to her willowy figure on the red carpet and saw her narrow wrists and the little, almost invisible blond hairs on her arms.

Aimee, here. Now. Not only alive, but in perfect condition.

I understand nothing about how or why this is happening, but I am certain, in this moment, of one thing.

I will never leave this life.

Whatever the rules are, I don’t care. There is no wizard or Ghost of Christmas Anything here to explain the lesson I’m supposed to be learning, much less to wrench me back to my life. Why would I ever go back? This isn’t exactly a Sophie’s choice. Everyone in my life is in this one, except, heart-shatteringly, Dido. I can’t really think too hard about her; it makes me ache.

But there is no reason, no power strong enough on earth to move me from this spot. And by that, I mean Avalon. Because of course, I’m not going to forcibly sit in Aimee’s lap whether she likes it or not, smothering her with the relief I feel. I can’t be Lenny with the puppy here. I have to give her some space if I want to have her at all. But nothing is going to take me away.

“You okay?” she asks. “You look sick or something.”

This brings me back to reality. Or as close as I can get right now.