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What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enorrave; vu, why people believe they’ve lived past lives, because there is no way the years I’ve spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I’ The moenerations--all of the themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen In your heart, in your bones, nohas been leading to this, all the secret arroere pointing here, the universe and tio, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be

We wake an hour later to the sound of her phone

I keep roan Hear her tell her one deep black and the sky has gone ink blue The chill in the air presses harder against us as we pick up the blanket, provide a new set of footprints

She navigates, I drive She talks, I listen We sing some more Then she leans into my shoulder and I let her stay there and sleep for a little longer, drea not to think of ill happen next

I aet to see people while they’re asleep Not like this She is the opposite of when I first met her Her vulnerability is open, but she’s safe within it I watch the rise and fall of her, the stir and rest of her I only wake her when I need her to tell o

The last tento do tomorrow I find it hard to respond

"Even if we can’t do this, I’ll see you at lunch?" she asks

I nod

"Andafter school?"

"I think so Ion My ht now"

This h Tomorrow is toet to town, I can access the directions to her house without having to ask her But I want to get lost anyway To prolong this To escape this

"Here we are," Rhiannon says as we approach her driveway

I pull the car to a stop I unlock the doors

She leans over and kisses me My senses are alive with the taste of her, the s, the sight of her as she pulls her body away from mine

"That’s the nice note," she says And before I can say anything else, she’s out the door and gone

I don’t get a chance to say goodbye

I guess, correctly, that Justin’s parents are used to hi dinner They try to yell at hih the motions, and when Justin storms off to his room, it’s just the latest rerun of an old show

I should be doing Justin’s homework--I’, if I’ining her at hoining her believing that things are different, that Justin has soed