I’d wanted to face my demons, I’d locked myself in this cage with them. I studied her clothes and remembered the person I’d grown up with, I looked for the mannerisms—

She isn’t well

—that could give me any clue.

Looking at her was like staring into the sun, but it elicited thoughts of something noxious instead, not something bright.

Ankle-length because she’d never liked short skirts or pants that hugged the leg. Self-conscious about the shape of her legs, despite the fact that they’d been fine. Even now, past the end of the world, little things held true.

To stare into the sun was to do permanent damage to the retina. To face her down was something more guttural, a feeling at the hollow of the collarbone, an ugly feeling that made me worry there would be a similar kind of permanent damage.

I wanted to expel it, somehow, exorcise it. To vomit, to say something foul.

To say the simplest thing ever, from the part of me nearest to the center. I’d grown up telling my parents I loved them. I’d said I’d loved Amy and I was more certain I had than I was that I’d loved my parents. We loved family just because. I’d once loved Amy as a sister for reasons that went beyond just because. Because she’d had my back and I’d had hers, and because we’d both been fuller, richer people in each other’s company.

But nothing quite mirrored the feeling I was wrestling with now more than my third time with Dean. Because I had loved him. After our first and second times together, nervous and still figuring ourselves and each other out, our third time together had been comfortable, heated, intense, and the love I’d had for him had been something I could experience with every sense, something that could brim the fuck over.

Making love as a word had made sense to me, because we’d done it, in all senses of the word, and then we had that love, we’d cuddled after and basked in each other, we’d been comfortable with each other in a profound way.

And I could remember Amy’s comments back then, when I’d told her about it, when I’d tried to encourage her to date Dean’s friend. How many high school relationships really lasted? It was worth trying. I couldn’t imagine a world where I wasn’t better off having experienced this. How many times had we broken up and gotten back together, she’d asked. Three. Didn’t that make me worry, she’d asked? No.