Then there’s the fact that I can only see her on her terms. I come to her at the mall, play my fiddle at her fairy revels, stay the night sometimes in her private quarters that aren’t quite in this world, aren’t quite in fairyland, but some place in between the two. She doesn’t come to a gig with me. To an art opening. To a movie unless it’s at the mall’s Cineplex. Out for dinner, except for ditto, and the mall eateries are never going to make it into the city’s best culinary guidebook any time soon.

So she’s not exactly an ideal life companion. She’s not someone I might expect to make a life with, to grow old with.

I know, how incurably romantic of me, looking for everlasting love in a world of five-second sound bytes, where most people find it more interesting to watch the so-called reality of other people’s lives in scripted television shows than to actually live one of their own.

But I do want that long-term stability. I don’t really expect to ever find it, but that doesn’t stop me from yearning for it all the same. That said, I also have to admit that I’m probably more scared of getting into a serious relationship than I am of living the rest of my life on my own. It’s not that I’m a commitment phobe. It’s just that whenever I do, sooner or later, I get left behind.

My last serious relationship really brought it all home to me—how this was something that was never going to work in my life. Because we were perfect for each other; what problems we had, we were both willing to talk about and work on, compromising where necessary—you know, all the things you’re supposed to do in a relationship, though that’s nothing I learned from my own parents. Tanya and I, we did everything right, but one day, there I was all the same, alone in our L.A. apartment, packing my bags to come back to Newford.

So in a way, these occasional liaisons with Galfreya—no strings attached, be together when it felt right, no hard feelings when it didn’t—should have been perfect. But I, at least, am human and we’re never satisfied, are we? What I had with Galfreya wasn’t true love. It had no future. It had only the here and the now, and while that’s obviously enough for fairy, who seem to live the whole of their lives ever in the moment, it wasn’t enough for me.

“I’m sorry you can’t stay,” Galfreya said, then leaned close to kiss me. “Say hello to Christy for me,” she added.

“I will.”