Sing You Home

ZOE

My very first best friendship was grounded in proximity. Ellie lived across the street in a house that always looked a little tired at the edges, with its droopy window wells and frayed clapboards. Her mother was single, like mine, although by choice and not by fate. She worked in an insurance company and wore low heels and boxy suits to the office, but I remember her glamorously affixing fake eyelashes and ratting her hair before heading out to a dance club on weekends.

I was completely unlike Ellie, who-at age eleven-was a stunning girl with sunshine twined in the curls of her hair, and long colt legs with a perpetual summer tan. Her room was always a mess, and she’d have to dump piles of clothes and books and stuffed animals on the floor in order for us to have a place to sit on the bed. She thought nothing of stealing into her mother’s closet to “borrow” clothes for dress up or sprays of perfume. She read magazines, never books.

But the one thing Ellie and I had in common was that, of all the kids in our class, we were the two without fathers. Even kids whose parents were divorced saw the missing parent for weekends or holidays, but not Ellie and me. I couldn’t, obviously. And Ellie had never met her dad. Ellie’s mother referred to him as the One, in a reverent tone that made me think he must have died young, like my own father. Years later I learned that this wasn’t the case at all; that the One was a married guy who’d been cheating on his wife but wouldn’t leave her.

Ellie’s older sister, Lila, was supposed to watch us on the nights when her mom went out, but Lila spent all her time in her bedroom with the door closed. We weren’t allowed to bother her, and most of the time we didn’t, even though she had the coolest fluorescent posters that glowed under a black light behind her bed. Instead we cooked ourselves Campbell’s soup and watched scary movies on the premium cable channels, shielding our eyes from the screen.

I could tell Ellie anything. Like how, sometimes, I woke up screaming because I had a nightmare that my mother had died, too. Or that I worried I would never be brilliant at anything, and who wanted to be average her whole life? I confessed that I faked a stomachache to get out of taking a math quiz and that I had once seen a boy’s penis at camp when his bathing suit slid off during a jackknife dive. On school nights I called her before I went to sleep, and in the morning, she phoned me to ask what color shirt I was wearing, so that we would match.

One weekend, during a sleepover at Ellie’s house, I climbed out of the bed we shared and crept down the hallway. The door to her mother’s room was open, and inside, the room was empty, even though it was after 3:00 A.M. Lila’s door, as usual, was closed, but there was a purple line of light bleeding out from beneath it. I turned the knob, wondering if she was still awake. Inside, the room was magical-cloudy with incense and lavender streams of light, those ultraviolet posters coming alive in 3-D. One, a skull with rosette eyes, seemed to be moving toward me. Lila was lying on the bed with her eyes wide open and a rubber hose tied around her arm, like the kind I’d seen at the doctor’s office when I had to have a blood test, once. A syringe was in the palm of her open hand.

I was quite sure she was dead.

I took a step forward. Lila was incredibly still, and faintly blue in the eerie light. I thought of my father, and how he collapsed on the lawn. I was gathering the loose threads of a scream in my throat, when suddenly Lila rolled over in one languid move, scaring the hell out of me. “Get lost, you little shit,” she said, her words as round and thin as bubbles, popping as soon as they hit the air.

I do not remember the rest of that night. Except that I ran home, even though it was three in the morning.

And that, after what happened, Ellie and I were never really friends anymore.

When I was in high school, my mother used to make up alternate names for the kids I invited over to our house. Robin became Bonnie, Alice became Elise, Suzy became Julie. No matter how many times I corrected her, she preferred to call these girls by names that felt comfortable to her, instead of what was accurate. After a while, my friends even started answering to whatever she called them.

Which is why it’s so extraordinary to me that my mother has never-not once-messed up Vanessa’s name. The two of them hit it off the moment they first met. There is no end to the things they have in common; and they seem to think it’s funny that it drives me crazy.

It’s been two months since Vanessa and I bumped into each other at the Y, and she has slipped seamlessly into the role of my closest friend at a time when I desperately needed it-since my former closest friend happened to have recently divorced me. So much of a friendship is like a love affair-the novelty and sparkle wearing down at the edges to become something comfortable and predictable, like the cardigan you take out of your drawer on a rainy Sunday because you need to surround yourself with something cozy and familiar. Vanessa is the one I call when I am procrastinating on organizing my taxes; when I am channel surfing and find Dirty Dancing on TNT and cannot stop watching; when the homeless guy in front of Dunkin’ Donuts looks at the five-dollar bill I’ve given him and asks if he can have it in ones. She’s the one I call when I’m bored in traffic on I-95, and when I’m crying because a two-year-old patient with burns over eighty percent of his body dies in the middle of the night. I’ve programmed her cell number into my phone, on the speed-dial key that used to belong to Max.

It is easy, with twenty-twenty hindsight, to see how I got to a point where I didn’t really have any friends. There’s that necessary shift that comes with marriage, when your best confidant is now the one you’re sleeping with at night. But then the other women I knew all started having babies, and I distanced myself from them out of self-preservation and jealousy. Max was the only one who understood what I so badly wanted and needed. Or so I’d told myself.

Here’s what girlfriends do for you: they provide the reality check. They are the ones who tell you when you have spinach between your teeth or when your ass looks fat in a pair of jeans or when you’re being a bitch. They tell you, and there’s no drama or agenda, like there would be if the message had come from your husband. They tell you the truth because you need to hear it, but it doesn’t alter the bond between you. I don’t think I realized how much I missed that, until now.

Right now, Vanessa and I are about to be late to a movie because my mother is talking about a breakthrough with one of her clients. “So, I bought two dozen bricks and loaded them in the back of my car,” my mother is saying. “And then, when we got to the cliff, I had Deanna write on each of the bricks with a Sharpie marker-keywords, you know, that signified her emotional baggage.”

“Brilliant,” Vanessa says.

“You think? So she writes My Ex on one. And Never made peace with my sister on another. And Didn’t lose last 20 pounds after having kids, and so on. I’m telling you, Vanessa, she went through three markers alone. And then I got her on the edge of the cliff and had her hurl the bricks, one at a time. I told her that the minute they hit the water, that weight was going to be off her shoulders for good.”

“Sure hope there wasn’t a humpback migration going on below the cliff,” I murmur, tapping my foot impatiently. “Look, I hate to break up the professional development session, but we’re about to miss the early showing-”

Vanessa stands up. “I think it’s a terrific idea, Dara,” she says. “You ought to write it up and submit it to a professional journal.”

My mother’s cheeks pinken. “Honestly?”

I grab my purse and my jacket. “Are you going to let yourself out?” I ask my mother.

“No, no,” she says, getting to her feet. “I’ll just go home.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come along?” Vanessa asks.

“I’m sure my mother’s got better things to do,” I say quickly, and give her a quick hug. “I’ll call you in the morning,” I say, and I drag Vanessa out of the apartment.

Halfway to the car, Vanessa turns around. “I forgot something,” she says, tossing me the keys. “I’ll be right back.” So I let myself into the convertible and turn the ignition. I am surfing the channels of her radio when she slips into the driver’s seat. “Okay,” Vanessa says, backing out of the driveway. “Who spit in your Cheerios?”

“Well, what were you thinking, inviting my mom to come with _us?”

“That she’s all alone on a Saturday night?”

“I’m forty, Vanessa-I don’t want to hang out with my mother!”

“You would if you couldn’t,” Vanessa says.

I look at her. In the dark, the reflection from the rearview mirror casts a yellow mask around her eyes. “If you miss your mother so much, you can have mine,” I say.

“I’m just saying you don’t have to be so mean.”

“Well, you don’t have to enable her, either. Did you seriously think her brick exercise was a good one?”

“Sure. I’d use it myself, except the kids would probably write the names of their teachers on the bricks they’re tossing, and that wouldn’t be very constructive.” She pulls up to a stop sign and turns to me. “You know, Zoe, my mother used to tell me the same story five times. Without fail. I was constantly saying, Ma, yes, I know, and rolling my eyes. And now-I can’t even really remember her voice. I think sometimes I’ve got it, in my head, but then it fades before I can ever really hear it. Sometimes, I put on old videotapes just so I don’t completely forget how she sounds, and I listen to her telling me to get a serving spoon for the potatoes, or singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Right now, I’d kill to have her tell me a story five times. I’d settle for even once.”

I know, halfway through her story, that I am going to cave in. “Is this what you do with the kids in school?” I sigh. “Make them see themselves for the petty, nasty people they really are?”

“If I think it’s going to work,” she says, smiling.

I turn on my cell phone. “I’ll tell my mother to meet us at the theater.”

“She’s already coming. That’s why I ran back into the house-to invite her.”

“Were you really so sure I’d change my mind?”

“Give me a break.” Vanessa laughs. “I even know what you’re going to order at the concession counter.”

She probably does. Vanessa is like that-if you say or do something once, it sticks in her memory so that she will be able to reference it the next time it’s necessary. Like how I once mentioned I don’t like olives, and then, a month later at a restaurant when we were given a basket of olive bread, she asked for crackers instead before I could even make a comment.

“Just for the record,” I say, “there’s still a lot about me you don’t know.”

“Popcorn, no butter,” Vanessa says. “Sprite.” She purses her lips. “And Goobers, because this is a romantic comedy and those are never quite as good without chocolate.”

She’s right. Down to the candy.

I think, not for the first time, that if Max had been even half as observant and attentive as Vanessa, I’d probably still be married.

When we pull up to the theater, I’m amazed to find a crowd. The movie has been out for a few weeks now-it’s a silly, fizzy romantic comedy. The other movie playing is an independent film called July that’s gotten a lot of press, because a very popular preteen singing sensation is starring in it, and because of the subject matter: instead of being a Romeo and Juliet tragedy… the love story is about Juliet and Juliet.

Vanessa spots my mother on the other side of the throng and waves her over. “Can you believe this?” she says, looking around.

I’ve seen a few articles written about the film and the controversy surrounding it. I begin to wonder if we should go see that movie instead, just based on its popular appeal. But as we get closer to the theater, I realize that the people milling around are not in the ticket line. They’re flanking it, and they’re carrying signs:

GOD HATES FAGS

GAY: GOD ABHORS YOU

ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE

They are not militant, crazy people. The protesters are calm and organized, and wearing black suits with skinny ties, or modest floral print dresses. They look like your neighbor, your grandmother, your history teacher. In this, I suppose, they have something in common with the people they are slandering.

Beside me, I feel Vanessa’s spine go rigid. “We can leave,” I murmur. “Let’s just rent a video and watch it at home.”

But before I can pull away, I hear my name being called. “Zoe?”

At first, I don’t recognize Max. The last time I saw him, after all, he was drunk and disheveled, and trying to explain to a judge why we should be granted a divorce. I’d heard that he started going to Reid and Liddy’s church, but I hadn’t quite expected a transformation this… radical.

Max is wearing a fitted dark suit with a charcoal tie. His hair has been trimmed neatly, and he’s clean-shaven. On the lapel of his suit is a pin: a small gold cross.

“Wow,” I say. “You look great, Max.”

We do an awkward dance, where we move toward each other for a kiss on the cheek, but then I pull away, and he pulls away, and we both look down at the ground.

“So do you,” he says.

He is wearing a walking cast. “What happened?” I ask. It seems crazy that I wouldn’t know. That Max would have gotten hurt, and no one relayed the message to me.

“It’s nothing. An accident,” Max says.

I wonder who took care of him, when he was first hurt.

Behind me, I am incredibly conscious of my mother and Vanessa. I can feel their presence like heat thrown from a fireplace. Someone in the front of the line buys a ticket to July, and the protest starts up in earnest, with chanting and yelling and sign waving. “I heard you were part of Eternal Glory, now,” I say.

“Actually, it’s a part of me,” Max replies. “I let Jesus into my heart.”

He says this with a brilliant white smile, the same way he’d say, I got my car waxed this afternoon or I think I’ll have Chinese food for dinner-as if this is part of normal everyday conversation instead of a statement that might give you pause. I wait for Max to snicker-we used to make fun of Reid and Liddy sometimes for the glory-be snippets that fell out of their mouths-but he doesn’t.

“Have you been drinking again?” I ask, the only explanation I can come up with to reconcile the man I know with the one standing in front of me.

“No,” Max says. “Not a drop.”

Maybe not of alcohol, but it’s pretty clear to me that Max has been chugging whatever Kool-Aid the Eternal Glory Church is offering. There’s something just off about him-something Stepford-like. I preferred Max with all his complicated imperfections. I preferred Max when we used to make fun of Liddy for saying “Jeezum Crow” when she was frustrated, for being gullible enough to believe him when he told her that Rick Warren was mounting a presidential campaign.

Full disclosure: I’m not a religious person. I don’t begrudge people the right to believe in whatever they believe, but I don’t like having those same beliefs forced on me. So when Max says, “I’ve been praying for you, Zoe,” I have absolutely no idea what to say. I mean, it’s nice to be prayed for, I suppose, even if I’ve never asked for it.

But do I really want to be prayed for by a bunch of people who are using God to camouflage a message of hate? There are beautiful, wholesome teenage girls standing in front of the ticket booth handing out flyers that say: I WAS BORN BLOND. YOU CHOOSE TO BE GAY. Their clean-cut attentiveness, their claim of being “Good Christians” are the icing, I realize, on a cake that’s laced with arsenic. “Why would you want to do this kind of thing?” I ask Max. “Why does a movie even matter to you?”

“Perhaps I can answer that,” a man says. He has a cascade of white hair and stands nearly six inches taller than Max; I think I recognize him from news clips as the pastor of this church. “We wouldn’t be here if the homosexuals weren’t promoting their own agenda, their own activism. If we sit back, who’s going to speak for the rights of the traditional family? If we sit back, who’s going to make sure our great country doesn’t become a place where Johnny has two mommies and where marriage is as God intended it to be-between a man and woman?” His voice has escalated. “Brothers and sisters-we are here because Christians have become the minority! Homosexuals claim they have a right to be heard? Well, so do Christians!”

There is a roar from his congregants, who push their placards higher in the air.

“Max,” the pastor says, tossing him a set of keys, “we need another box of pamphlets from the van.”

Max nods and then turns to me. “I’m really glad you’re doing well,” he says, and for the first time since we’ve started talking I believe him.

“I’m glad you’re doing well, too.” I mean it, even if he’s on a road I’d never walk myself. But in a way, this is the ultimate vindication for me, the proof that our relationship could never have been mended. If this is where Max was headed, it was not somewhere I’d ever have wanted to go.

“You’re not going to see July, I hope?” Max says, and he offers up that half smile that made me fall in love with him.

“No. The Sandra Bullock movie.”

“Wise choice,” Max replies. Impulsively, he leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. I breathe in the scent of his shampoo and am viscerally hit with an image of the bottle in the shower, with its blue cap and its little sticker about tea tree oil and its health properties. “I think about you every day…,” Max says.

Drawing back, I am suddenly dizzy; I wonder if this is the ghost of old love.

“… I think of how much happier you could be, if you let the Lord in,” Max finishes.

And just like that, I am firmly rooted in reality again. “Who are you?” I murmur, but Max has already turned his back, headed to the parking lot to do his pastor’s bidding.

The bar is called Atlantis and is tragically hip, set in a new boutique hotel in Providence. On the walls a projector ripples color, to simulate being under the sea. The drinks are all served in cobalt glassware, and the booths are carved out of fake coral, with cushions fashioned to look like bright sea anemone. The centerpiece of the room is a huge water tank, where tropical fish swim with a woman squeezed into a silicone mermaid tail and shell bra.

Fortunately, my mother has decided to go home after the movie, leaving Vanessa and me to have a drink by ourselves. I am fascinated by the woman in the tank. “How does she breathe?” I ask out loud, and then see her surreptitiously sneak a gulp of oxygen from a scubalike device that she’s concealing in her hand, which is attached to an apparatus at the top of the tank.

“I stand corrected,” Vanessa says. “There is a career path for women who dreamed of being mermaids when they were girls.”

A waitress brings us our drinks and nuts served, predictably, in a large shell. “I could see where this would get old very fast,” I say.

“I don’t know. I was reading about how, in China, theme restaurants are all the rage right now. There’s one that serves only TV dinners. And another that only has medieval food, plus you have to eat with your hands.” She looks up at me. “The one I’m itching to go to, though, is the prehistoric restaurant. They serve raw meat.”

“Do you have to kill it yourself?”

Vanessa laughs. “Maybe. Imagine being the hostess: ‘Uh, miss, we reserved a table with the hunters, but we were seated with the gatherers instead.’” She lifts her drink-a dirty martini, which tastes like paint thinner to me (when I told Vanessa this, she said, “When did you last drink paint thinner?”), and toasts. “To Eternal Glory. May they one day succeed in separating Church and Hate.”

I lift my glass, too, but I don’t drink from it. I’m thinking about Max.

“I don’t understand people who complain about the mysterious ‘homosexual agenda,’” Vanessa muses. “You know what’s on that agenda, for my gay friends? To spend time with family, to pay their bills, and to buy milk on the way home from work.”

“Max was an alcoholic,” I say abruptly. “He had to drop out of college because of his drinking. He used to surf whenever the conditions were right. We’d fight because he was supposed to be running a business, and then I’d find out that he ditched his clients for the day because of some ten-foot swells.”

Vanessa sets down her drink and looks at me.

“My point is,” I continue, “that he wasn’t always like this. Even that suit… I don’t think he owned more than a sports jacket the entire time we were married.”

“He looked a little like a CIA operative,” Vanessa says.

My lips twitch. “All he needs is an earpiece.”

“I’m pretty sure the hotline to God is wireless.”

“People must see through all that rhetoric,” I say. “Does anyone really take Clive Lincoln seriously?”

Vanessa runs her finger around the lip of her martini glass. “I was at the grocery store yesterday and there was a bumper sticker on the pickup truck next to my car. It said, SAVE A DEER… SHOOT A QUEER.” She glances up. “So yeah. I think some people take him seriously.”

“But I never expected Max to be one of them.” I hesitate. “Do you think this is my fault?”

I expect Vanessa to immediately dismiss the idea, but instead, she thinks for a moment. “If you hadn’t been pulling yourself together after you lost the baby, then maybe you would have been able to help Max when he needed it. Sounds to me, though, like Max was already broken when you met him. And if that’s the case, no matter how much you patched him up, sooner or later he was going to fall apart again.” She picks up her glass and drains it. “You know what you need? You need to let go.”

“Of what?”

“Max, obviously.”

I can feel my cheeks burn. “I’m not holding on to him.”

“Hey, I get it. It’s only natural, since you two-”

“He wasn’t even my type,” I blurt out, and I realize after I say it that it is true. “Max was-well, he was just completely different from the kinds of guys who were usually interested in me.”

“You mean big and brawny and sexy?”

“You think?” I ask, surprised.

“Just because I don’t hang modern art in my house doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it,” Vanessa says.

“Max was always trying to teach me about football, and I hated football. All those guys piling on top of each other on Astroturf. And basketball is pointless. You don’t even have to watch a whole game-it always comes down to the last two minutes. And he was messy. He’d leave a melon on the counter after he cut himself a slice, and by nighttime, the kitchen would be crawling with ants. And he could hold a grudge like nobody’s business. I wouldn’t even know he was upset until six months went by and he brought it up during an argument about something totally different.”

“But you married him,” Vanessa points out.

“Well,” I answer. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

I don’t even know how to answer that. “Because,” I say finally, “when you love someone, you don’t see the parts of him you don’t like.”

“Seems to me you need to do a better job next time of getting what you really want.”

“Next time!” I repeat. “I don’t think so. I’m through with relationships.”

“Oh really. You’re putting yourself on the shelf at forty?”

“Shut up,” I say. “Get back to me after you’re divorced.”

“Zo, I’d take you up on that, if only because it means I’d have the right to be married. Seriously, look around. There’s got to be someone attractive in here for you…”

“I am not letting you set me up, Vanessa.”

“Then just tell me. As an academic exercise, of course…”

“Tell you what?”

“What you’re looking for.”

“For God’s sake, Vanessa, I have no idea. I’m not thinking about any of that yet.”

I glance at the mermaid. She is on break, emerging from the tank by hopping up a ladder. When she gets to the top, where there is a ledge she can sit on, she reaches for a towel and dries herself off before checking her BlackBerry.

“Someone real,” I hear myself saying. “Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who’s smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands that music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I’ve known my whole life, even if I haven’t.”

When I’m done, I look up to find Vanessa smirking at me. “Gee,” she says. “I’m certainly glad you aren’t thinking about this yet.”

I finish my wine. “Well, you asked.”

“I did. So that when I bump into your future spouse on the street, I can give out your number.”

“What’s your perfect date?” I ask.

Vanessa tosses a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Oh, I’m not nearly as discriminating. Female, desperate, willing.” She glances up at the mermaid, now drinking sullenly from a whiskey glass. “Human.”

“You’re so picky,” I say, laughing. “How are you ever going to find someone?”

“Story of my life,” she replies. “Story of my life.”

It is not until I am home and lying in bed that I realize Vanessa never seriously answered my question, at least not nearly as seriously as I’d answered hers.

And that-with the exception of the pronoun I’d used-the verbal sketch I gave of my perfect match had actually described Vanessa.

What songs would be on a mix tape that describes you?

It’s a question I’ve used my whole life, as a foolproof test of character. It grew out of the old “Witch Doctor” record that reminded my mother so much of my missing dad. There’s no question that, for her, this would be one of the tracks. And “Always and Forever”-the song she and my dad danced to at their wedding-which, when heard in its elevator Muzak incarnation, always made them circle around in each other’s arms no matter where they were or how large the crowd, which to me was magical and mortifying all at once. And a Beatles song-she tells a story about sleeping outside a hotel where the Fab Four were camped for a press junket, just so that she could get a glimpse of them as they left for the airport. And Enya and Yanni, which she uses now for mindful breathing. Seriously, if you looked through the Favorites list on my mother’s iPod, you could probably sketch her out as thoroughly as if you’d met her in person.

This is true of anyone: the music we choose is a clear reflection of who we really are. There is a lot you can tell about a person who lists Bon Jovi among his favorites. Or, for that matter, Weezer. Or the original cast recording of Bye Bye Birdie.

I first used the mix tape test to check romantic compatibility in high school, when my boyfriend insisted on playing one Journey track over and over again on his car stereo whenever we were steaming up the windows. He’d stop in the middle of whatever we were doing to belt out the chorus. I should have known better than to trust a man who loved power ballads.

After that, I asked all my potential love interests about the fictional mix tape. I told them there was no right answer, which is true. There are, however, some blatantly wrong answers:

“Crazy.”

“I’m Too Sexy.”

“Mmmbop.”

“The Streak.”

“All My Ex’s Live in Texas.”

Max’s list was a collection of country music, a genre of which I’ve never been a fan. Somehow the songs always seem to talk about drinking and having your wife leave you, or else they compare women to large pieces of farm equipment, like tractors and trucks. You know that old joke about the cowboy and the biker who are on death row, set to be executed on the same day? The prison guard asks the cowboy for his last request, and he begs to hear the song “Achy Breaky Heart” before he dies. The guard then asks the biker for his last request. “To be killed before you play that song,” he says.

The most interesting people I’ve ever met are the ones who answer the question with music I have never experienced before: South African a cappella groups, Peruvian drummers, up-and-coming alt rockers from Seattle, Jane Birkin, the Postelles. When I was at Berklee I dated a boy whose list was all rap. I had grown up in the suburbs listening to Casey Kasem and didn’t know much about hip-hop music. But he explained how its roots grew from the griots of West Africa-traveling singers and poets who were keeping a centuries-old oral storytelling tradition. He played me rap songs that were social commentary. He taught me how to write my own flow, how to feel poetry in syllables and rhythm in the spaces between the words. He taught me that what wasn’t said was just as important as what was.

I fell pretty hard for him, actually.

I stopped using the question to learn more about potential dates once I met Max, of course, but I didn’t retire the inquiry. Now, I ask my clients. I’ve met people whose lists are all classical; I’ve met people who choose only heavy metal. I’ve met burly, tattooed motorcyclists who love opera and grandmothers who know Eminem’s lyrics by heart.

The music we listen to may not define who we are.

But it’s a damn good start.

In February, Vanessa and I sign up for a Bikram yoga class, the kind that’s done in an abnormally hot room. We go to one session and leave at the halfway point five-minute break, certain we are both about to have strokes.

So the next week I call her up and tell her that maybe belly dancing is more our thing. We are pretty good at it, actually, but our classmates are not. We get booted by the instructor because we can’t stop laughing when we are supposed to be focusing.

On Saturdays, we fall into a habit. Vanessa comes to my house with coffee and bagels, and we read the paper at the kitchen table. Then we make a list of all the errands we need to accomplish during the weekend. Like me, she is too busy during business hours to get to the cleaners or the grocery store or the post office, so we pool our destinations. Instead of going alone, it is a lot more fun to wander the aisles of Walmart together debating whether plus-size Tinker Bell lingerie is serving a niche market or creating an aberrant one.

We go to the farmers’ market-which is mostly jars of honey and beeswax candles and crafts made from homespun wool, at this time of year-and we wander from booth to booth, trying free samples. Sometimes we get inspired and pick a recipe out of Cooking Light, then cobble together the ingredients and spend the afternoon making the soufflé or the ragout or the beef Wellington.

One Saturday in early March, I am left to my own devices. Vanessa’s gone to San Francisco to a friend’s wedding, which is actually a good thing-since I have more to do than usual. The student Vanessa spoke with me about months ago-Lucy DuBois-has just been released from a six-week inpatient program for depressed adolescents at McLean Hospital. She is coming back to school, and I’m going to start working with her. I have been poring over books about teens and depression, and music therapy for mood disorders.

I’ve promised Vanessa I’ll pick up her dry cleaning along with mine, so I make a quick run downtown before settling in to reread Lucy’s school file. The woman who runs the cleaner is tiny, with a quickness to her movements that always makes me think of a hummingbird. “You’re all alone today,” she says, taking the tickets from me and running the wonderful maze of mechanized hangers. Last week, when Vanessa said they looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie, the owner took us behind the counter to see how they snaked around back, like a giant zipper running the perimeter of the ceiling.

“Yeah. Flying solo this weekend,” I reply.

She hands me my trousers, and a bright bouquet of Vanessa’s button-down shirts. I trade her this week’s dry cleaning and tuck the pink slips into my purse. “Thanks,” I say. “See you next week.”

“Tell your partner I said hello!”

I freeze in the act of zipping my wallet. “She’s not-I’m not-” I shake my head. “Mrs. Chin, Vanessa and I-We’re just friends.”

It is, I suppose, an honest mistake. She has seen me with Vanessa for weeks now; it’s actually wonderful to think the world has changed enough that a storekeeper might assume two people of the same sex are a couple.

So why am I blushing?

As I carry the dry cleaning back to my car, I think that, actually, this is funny. That when I tell Vanessa, she’ll think so, too.

The last teens I worked with were part of a diversion program meant to bring together warring adolescent gangs in the inner city. Previously, they’d been on the streets trying to kill each other. When I told them we’d be doing a drum circle together, they nearly charged for each other’s throats, but their resource officers forced them to sit down on the perimeter of the pile of percussion instruments I’d assembled: a djembe and a tubano, a conga drum, an ashiko, and a djun-djun. One by one, I handed out the instruments, and, believe me, if you are an adolescent boy with a drum in your hands, you’re going to beat it. We started with a simple hand rhythm: clap-clap-lap; clap-clap-lap. Then we moved to the drums. Eventually, we went around the circle so each kid could have a spotlighted solo with a unique rhythm.

Here’s what’s great about a drum circle: no one ever has to play alone. And all the inappropriate ways of expressing anger can be channeled into the movement of beating that drum instead in a safe, controlled setting. Before the group could even realize it, they were creating a piece of music, and they were doing it together.

So I have to admit, I’m feeling pretty confident about my first session with Lucy DuBois. One of the fantastic things about music is that it accesses both sides of the brain-the analytical left side and the emotional right side-and forces a connection. This is how a stroke victim who can’t speak a sentence might be able to sing a lyric; how a patient frozen by severe Parkinson’s disease can use the sequence and inherent rhythm in music in order to move and dance again. If music has the ability to bypass the part of the brain that isn’t working correctly in order to facilitate a link to the rest of the brain in these other situations, it must be able to do the same for a mind crippled by clinical depression.

In school, Vanessa’s different than she is when we’re just hanging out together. She wears tailored pantsuits and silk blouses in bright jewel colors, and she walks briskly, as if she is already five minutes late. When she comes across two teens groping in the hall, she breaks them apart with efficiency. “People,” she sighs, with a quietly unassuming authority, “is this really how you want to waste my time?”

“No, Miz Shaw,” the girl murmurs, and she and her boyfriend slink down opposite sides of the hallway, like two magnets repelled by the same polarity.

“Sorry about that,” Vanessa says, as I hurry to keep pace with her. “In my job, hormones are an occupational hazard.” She smiles at me. “So what’s the game plan for today?”

“An assessment,” I tell her. “The whole point of therapy is to come into the process where Lucy is.”

“I’m psyched. I’ve never really seen you in action before,” Vanessa says.

I stop walking. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re going to be great-”

“It’s not that,” I interrupt. “Vanessa, it’s therapy. If you referred Lucy to a psychiatrist, you wouldn’t expect to sit in on the session, would you?”

“Right. Got it,” she says, but I can tell she’s still miffed. “Anyway,” Vanessa starts moving at breakneck speed again, “I got you a room to use in the special needs wing.”

“Look, I don’t want you to-”

“Zoe,” Vanessa says brusquely, “I understand.”

I tell myself that I will explain it to her later. Because we turn the corner into the reserved room, and Lucy DuBois is slumped in a chair.

She has long ropes of red hair, some of which are caught beneath her checked flannel shirt. Her eyes are a hooded, angry brown. Her sleeves are rolled up to show faint red scars on her wrists, as if she’s daring the rest of us to comment. She’s chewing gum, which is banned on the school grounds.

“Lucy,” Vanessa says. “Get rid of the gum.”

She takes it out of her mouth and mashes it onto the surface of the desk.

“Lucy, this is Ms. Baxter.”

I toyed with going back to my maiden name, Weeks, but that made me think of my mother. Max had taken a lot away from me, but legally, I could still use that name if I wanted to. And a girl who’s grown up at the end of the alphabet doesn’t lightly decide to toss away a last name that begins with a B. “You can call me Zoe,” I say.

Everything about this girl screams defensive-from her hunched shoulders to her studious refusal to look me in the eye. I notice that she’s got a nose ring-one tiny, thin gold hoop that looks like a trick of the light until you do a second glance-and what seem to be tattoos on the knuckles of one hand.

They’re letters, actually.

F.U.C.K.

I remember Vanessa telling me that Lucy’s family attends Eternal Glory-Max’s ultraconservative church. I try to imagine Lucy handing out pamphlets in front of the movie theater with the bright, sparkly teenage girls who’d been there the night Pastor Clive & Co. set up their protest.

I wonder if Max knows her.

“I’m really looking forward to working with you, Lucy,” I say.

She doesn’t move a muscle.

“I’ll expect you to give Zoe your full attention,” Vanessa adds. “Do you have any questions before you two start?”

“Yeah.” Lucy’s head falls backward, like a dandelion too heavy for its stem. “If I don’t show up for these sessions, do I get a cut on my record?”

Vanessa looks at me and raises her brows. “Good luck,” she says, and she closes the door behind her as she leaves.

“So.” I pull a chair in front of Lucy’s so that she cannot help but see me, and sit down. “I’m really glad that I’ll be getting to work with you. Did anyone explain what music therapy is, exactly?”

“Bullshit?” Lucy offers.

“It’s a way to use music to access feelings that are sometimes locked inside,” I say, as if she hasn’t even spoken. “In fact, you’re probably doing a little of this on your own already. Everyone does. You know how, when you have a bad day and you only want to put on your sweats and eat a pint of chocolate ice cream and sob to the song ‘All by Myself’? That’s music therapy. Or when it finally gets warm enough to roll down the windows of you car, so you crank up the stereo and sing along? That’s music therapy, too.”

As I speak, I take out a notebook, so that I can begin to do my assessment. The plan is to write down comments a client gives, and my own impressions, and later to cobble them into a more formal clinical document. When I do this in the hospital, it’s easy-I assess the pain level of the client, her state of anxiety, her facial expressions.

Lucy, however, is a blank slate.

Her eyes stare straight over my shoulder; her thumb absently scratches at the carvings on the desk made by ballpoint pens and bored students.

“So,” I say brightly. “I thought that, today, maybe you could help me learn a little more about you. Like, for example, have you ever played an instrument?”

Lucy yawns.

“I guess that’s a no. Well, have you ever wanted to play one?”

When she doesn’t answer, I move my chair forward a little.

“Lucy, I asked if you ever wanted to play an instrument…”

She pillows her head on her arms, closing her eyes.

“That’s okay. A lot of people never learn to play instruments. But, you know, if that’s something you become interested in when we’re working together, I could help you. I know how to play everything-woodwinds, percussion, brass, keyboard, guitar…” I look down at my notebook. So far I’ve written Lucy’s name and nothing else.

“Everything,” Lucy repeats softly.

I am so excited to hear her sandpaper voice that I nearly fall forward out of my seat. “Yes,” I reply. “Everything.”

“Do you play the accordion?”

“Well. No.” I hesitate. “But I could learn it with you, if you wanted.”

“Didgeridoo?”

I tried, once, but couldn’t master the round breathing. “No.”

“So basically,” Lucy says, “you’re a fucking liar, like everyone else I’ve ever met.”

I learned a long time ago that engagement-any at all, even anger-is a step above complete indifference. “What kind of music do you like? What would I find on your iPod?”

Lucy has slipped back into silence. She takes out a pen and colors an elaborate pattern on the inside of her palm, a Maori knot of twists and swirls.

Maybe she doesn’t have an iPod. I bite the inside of my lip, angry at myself for making a socioeconomic assumption about a client. “I know your family is pretty religious,” I say. “Do you listen to Christian rock? Maybe there’s one particular band you really like?”

Silence.

“How about the first pop song whose lyrics you memorized? When I was little, my best friend’s older sister had a record player, and she used to play ‘Billy, Don’t Be a Hero’ on repeat. It was 1974, and Paper Lace was singing it. I saved up my allowance to buy my own copy. Even now when I hear that song I get teary at the end when the girl gets the memo about her boyfriend’s death,” I say. “It’s funny-if I could pick one song to bring to a desert island, I’d take that one. Believe me, I’ve heard a lot more complex and deserving music since then, but for sheer nostalgia, that would have to get my vote.” I look at Lucy. “How about you? What music would you want to bring if you were stranded on a desert island?”

Lucy smiles sweetly at me. “The Very Best of David Hasselhoff,” she says, and then she stands up. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

I just stare at her for a moment; Vanessa and I haven’t really talked about whether that’s allowed. But this is therapy, not jail-and besides, keeping her from going would be cruel and unusual punishment. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll wait here.”

“I bet you will,” Lucy murmurs, and she slips out the door.

I tap my fingers against the desk, and then pick up my pen. Client is very resistant to providing personal details, I write.

Likes Hasselhoff.

Then I cross off that last bit. Lucy only said that to see my reaction.

I think.

I had been so certain that I could break through to Lucy; I’d never doubted my skills as a therapist. But then again, the work I’d been doing lately involved either a captive audience (the nursing home residents) or those in so much physical distress that music could only help, not hurt (the burn victims). The factor of the equation I had left out was that, although I may have been looking forward to this session, Lucy DuBois wanted to be anywhere but here.

After a few minutes I start looking around the room.

Although most special needs kids are mainstreamed, this small conference room has the facilities for those whose Individualized Education Programs mandate them: bouncy balls to sit on instead of chairs; mini workstations where kids can stand behind the desks or work with others; shelves of books; tubs of Kooshes and rice and sandpaper. On the whiteboard is a single written phrase: Hi, Ian!

Who’s Ian? I wonder. And what did they do with him so that Lucy and I could meet?

I realize that about fifteen minutes have passed since Lucy left to go to the bathroom. Walking out of the classroom, I spy the girls’ restroom just across the hall. I push through the door to find a girl leaning toward the mirror, applying black eyeliner.

I duck down, but there are no feet beneath any of the stalls.

“Do you know Lucy DuBois?”

“Uh, yeah,” the girl says. “Total freak.”

“Did she come into the bathroom?”

The girl shakes her head.

“Dammit,” I mutter, walking back into the hallway. I glance into the room where we have been meeting, but I’m not naïve enough to think Lucy will be waiting.

I will have to go back to the main office, and report the fact that Lucy left the session.

I’ll have to tell Vanessa.

And then I’ll do exactly what Lucy did: cut my losses, and leave.

After failing miserably with Lucy, the last thing I want to do is go home. I know there will be messages waiting from Vanessa-she wasn’t in her office when I signed out, and so I had to leave an explanatory and apologetic note about the abortive first music therapy session. I turn off my cell phone and drive to the most anonymous place I could think of: Walmart. You’d be surprised at how much time you can spend wandering through the aisles; looking at Corelle dinnerware with lemon and lime patterns, and comparing the prices of generic vitamins to those of brand names. I fill up a cart with things I do not need: dish towels and a camping lantern and a BeDazzler; three Jim Carrey DVDs packaged together for ten dollars, Crest Whitestrips. Then I abandon the cart somewhere in the fishing and hunting section and unfold a lawn chair. I sit down and try to read the latest People.

I don’t quite know why my failure with Lucy DuBois is so crushing. I’ve had plenty of other clients whose initial meetings were not dynamic successes. The autistic boy I worked with at the same high school a year ago, for example, did nothing but rock in a corner for the first four visits. I know that, in spite of what happened today, Vanessa will trust my judgment if I say that next time will be better. She’ll forgive me for letting Lucy slip away; she’ll probably even blame the girl instead of me.

I’m not afraid of her being disappointed.

It’s just that I don’t want to be the one to disappoint her.

“Excuse me,” an employee says. I look up to see his big Walmart badge, his thinning hair. He speaks slowly, as if I am a toddler unable to understand him. “The chairs are not for sitting.”

Then what are they for? I wonder. But I just smile politely, get up, refold the chair, and stick it back on the shelf.

I drive mindlessly for a half hour before finding myself in the parking lot of a bar that’s only a mile from my house. I used to work there-first as a waitress, then as a singer-before Max and I started in vitro. Then, I was tired all the time, or stressed, or both. Playing acoustic guitar at 10:00 P.M. twice a week lost its appeal.

It’s nearly empty, because it’s a Wednesday, and it’s only just past dinnertime.

Also because there is a big sign out front that says, WEDNESDAY IS KARAOKE NIGHT.

Karaoke, in my opinion, is right up there on the list of the greatest mistakes ever invented, along with Windows Vista and spray-on hair for balding men. It allows people who would normally only have the courage to sing in the confines of their own showers with the water running loudly to instead get on a stage and have fifteen minutes of dubious fame. For every truly remarkable karaoke performance you’ve ever heard, you’ve probably heard twenty horrendous ones.

Then again, by the time I’ve had my fourth drink in two hours, I am nearly ripping the microphone out of the hands of a middle-aged lady with a bad perm. I tell myself that this is because if she sings one more Celine Dion song I will have to strangle her with the hose that’s hooked up to the soda keg underneath the bar. But it is equally likely that the reason I need to sing is because I know it’s the one thing that will make me feel better.

The difference between people who become musicians and people who become music therapists is simple: a change in focus from what you personally can get out of music and what you can encourage someone else to get out of it. Music therapy is music without the ego-although most of us still hone our skills by playing in community bands and performing in choirs.

Or, in my case right now, karaoke.

I know I have a good voice. And on a day when my other abilities are being called into question, it’s downright restorative to have the patrons of the bar clapping and asking for an encore, to have the bartender handing me a glass to use as a tip jar.

I sing a little Ronstadt. A bit of Aretha. Some Eva Cassidy. At some point, I go out to my car to grab a guitar. I sing a few songs I’ve written, and sprinkle them with a little Melissa Etheridge and an acoustic version of Springsteen’s “Glory Days.” By the time I sing “American Pie,” I’ve got the whole bar doing the chorus with me, and I am not thinking about Lucy DuBois at all.

I’m not thinking, period. I’m just letting the music carry me, be me. I’m a thread of sound that slips like a stitch through every single person in this room, binding us tightly together.

When I finish, everyone applauds. The bartender pushes another gin and tonic down the bar toward me. “Zoe,” he says, “it’s about time you came back.”

Maybe I should do more of this. “I don’t know, Jack. I’ll think about it.”

“Do you take requests?”

I turn around to find Vanessa standing beside the barstool.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Which version? Brenda Lee or Buckcherry?” I wait until she’s climbed onto the stool beside mine and ordered a drink. “I’m not going to ask how you found me.”

“You have the only bright yellow Jeep in this entire town. Even the traffic helicopters can find you.” Vanessa shakes her head. “You’re not the first one Lucy’s run away from, you know. She did the same thing to the school shrink, the first time they met.”

“You could have told me…”

“I was hoping it would be different this time,” Vanessa says. “Are you going to come back?”

“Do you want me to come back?” I ask. “I mean, if you just want a warm body for Lucy to ditch, you could hire some teenager at minimum wage.”

“I’ll tie her down to the chair next time,” Vanessa promises. “And maybe we can make her listen to that lady sing Celine Dion.”

She points to the middle-aged woman whose karaoke career I intercepted. “You’ve been here that long?”

“Yeah. Why didn’t you tell me you could sing like that?”

“You’ve heard me sing a hundred times-”

“Somehow when you chime in with the Hot Pockets jingle, it doesn’t really convey the full range of your voice.”

“I used to play here a couple times a week,” I tell her. “I forgot how much I liked it.”

“Then you should do it again. I’ll even come be your audience so you never have to play to an empty room.”

Hearing her talk about an empty room reminds me of the music therapy session my client abandoned. I wrap my arms around the neck of my guitar case, as if creating a shield for myself. “I really thought I could get Lucy to open up. I feel like such a loser.”

“I don’t think you’re a loser.”

“What do you think of me?” The words slip out, before I have even meant for them to fly away.

“Well,” Vanessa says slowly, “I think you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met. Every time I think I have you pegged, I learn something else about you that totally surprises me. Like last weekend when you said that you keep a list of all the places you wish you’d gone to when you were younger. Or that you used to watch Star Trek and memorized the dialogue from every episode. Or that, I now realize, you are the next Sheryl Crow.”

There is a buttery glow to the room now; my cheeks are flushed, and I’m dizzy even though I’m sitting down. I did not drink very much when I was married to Max-out of solidarity, and then intended pregnancy-and for this reason the alcohol I’m not accustomed to has even more sway over my system. I reach across Vanessa to the stack of napkins beside the olive tray, and the fine hairs on my wrist brush against the silk sleeve of her blouse. It makes me shiver.

“Jack,” I call out. “I need a pen.”

The bartender tosses me one, and I unfold the cocktail napkin and write the numbers one through eight in a list. “What songs,” I ask, “would be on the mix tape that describes you?”

I hold my breath, thinking that she’s going to start laughing or just crumple the napkin, but instead Vanessa takes the pen out of my hand. When she bows her head toward the bar, her bangs cover one eye.

Did you ever notice how other people’s houses have a smell? I had asked, the first time I went over to Vanessa’s.

Please tell me mine isn’t something awful like bratwurst.

No, I said. It’s clean. Like sunlight on sheets. Then I asked her what my apartment smelled like.

Don’t you know?

No, I’d explained. I can’t tell because I live there. I’m too close to it.

It smells like you, Vanessa had said. Like a place nobody ever wants to leave.

Vanessa bites her lip as she writes down her list. Sometimes, she squints, or looks over at the bartender, or asks me a rhetorical question about the name of a band before she finds the answer herself.

A few weeks ago we were watching a documentary that said people lie on an average of four times a day. That’s 1,460 times a year, Vanessa had pointed out.

I did the math, too. Almost eighty-eight thousand times by the time you’re sixty.

I bet I know what the most common lie is, Vanessa had said: I’m fine.

I had told myself the reason I’d left the school without waiting for Vanessa to return to her office was because she was busy. I was afraid she’d think I was an abysmal music therapist. But the other reason I’d run was because I wanted (wished for?) her to come after me.

“Ta da,” Vanessa says, and she pushes the cocktail napkin back toward me. It lifts, like a butterfly, and then settles on the bar.

Aimee Mann. Ani DiFranco. Damien Rice. Howie Day.

Tori Amos, Charlotte Martin, Garbage, Elvis Costello.

Wilco. The Indigo Girls. Alison Krauss.

Van Morrison, Anna Nalick, Etta James.

I can’t speak for a moment.

“I know, it’s weird, right? Pairing Wilco and Etta James on the same CD is like sitting Jesse Helms and Adam Lambert next to each other at a dinner party… but I felt guilty getting rid of one.” Vanessa leans closer, pointing to the list again. “I couldn’t pick individual songs, either. Isn’t that like asking a mom which kid she loves the most?”

Every single artist she has put on her list is one I would have put on my list. And yet I know I’ve never shared that information with her. I couldn’t have, because I’ve never formally made my own CD playlist. I’ve tried but could never finish, not with all the possible songs in this world.

In music, perfect pitch is the ability to reproduce a tone without any reference to an external standard. In other words-there’s no need to label or name notes, you can just start singing a C-sharp, or you can listen to an A and know what it is. You can hear a car horn and know that it is an F.

In life, perfect pitch is the ability to know someone from the inside out, even better maybe than she knows herself.

When Max and I were married, we fought over the car radio all the time. He liked NPR; I liked music. I realize that, in all the months I’ve been friends with Vanessa, in all the car rides we’ve taken-from a quick run to the local bakery to a trip to Franconia Notch, New Hampshire-I have never changed the station. Not once. I’ve never even wanted to fast-forward through a CD she’s picked.

Whatever Vanessa plays, I just want to keep listening to.

Maybe I gasp, and maybe I don’t, but Vanessa turns, and for a moment we are frozen by our own proximity.

“I have to go,” I mutter, tearing myself away. I dig out all the money I have in my pocket and leave it crumpled on the bar, then grab my guitar case and hurry into the parking lot. Even as I unlock my car, with my hands still shaking, I can see Vanessa standing in the doorway. Even when the door is closed and I rev the engine, I know she’s calling my name.

On the night that Lila was shooting up heroin, there was a reason I’d been wandering through Ellie’s house.

I had awakened in the middle of the night to find Ellie staring at me. “What’s the matter?” I asked, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

“Can you hear that?” she whispered.

“Hear what?”

“Ssh,” Ellie said, holding a finger up to her lips. Then she moved the same finger to my lips.

But I didn’t hear anything. “I think-”

Before I could finish, Ellie put both of her hands on my cheeks and kissed me.

At that moment, I heard everything. From the bass in my blood to the sound of the house settling, to luna moths beating their heavy wings against the glass of the windows, to a baby crying somewhere down the block.

I leaped out of the bed and started running down the hallway. I knew Ellie wouldn’t call after me, because she’d wake up the whole household. But Ellie’s mother, as it turned out, wasn’t home yet. And Lila, Ellie’s sister, was OD’ing in her bedroom when I burst through the door.

Back then I thought that I was running away from Ellie, but now I wonder if I was actually running away from myself.

I wasn’t upset because my best friend unexpectedly kissed me.

I was upset because I started to kiss her back.

For two hours I drive aimlessly, but I think I know where I’m headed even before I get there. There is a light on upstairs at Vanessa’s house, so when she opens the door I don’t feel guilty about waking her.

“Where have you been?” she bursts out. “You’re not answering your phone. Dara and I have both been trying to reach you. You never went home tonight-”

“We have to talk,” I interrupt.

Vanessa steps back so that I can come into the entryway. She is still wearing the clothes she was wearing today at school, and she looks like hell-her hair’s a mess; there are faint purple circles beneath her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean for you-for me to-” She breaks off, shaking her head. “The thing is, Zoe, nothing happened. And I can promise you nothing will happen, because it’s way too important for me to have you as a friend than to risk losing you because-”

“Nothing happened? Nothing happened?” I can barely breathe. “You’re my best friend,” I say. “I want to be with you all the time, and when I’m not, I’m thinking about being with you. I don’t know anyone-including my mother, and my ex-husband-who gets me the way you do. I don’t even have to speak a sentence out loud for you to finish it.” I stare at Vanessa until she looks me in the eye. “So when you tell me Nothing happened? You’re dead wrong, Vanessa, because I love you. And that means everything happened. Everything.”

Vanessa’s jaw drops. She doesn’t move a muscle. “I… I don’t understand.”

“That makes two of us,” I admit.

We never know people as well as we think we do-including ourselves. I don’t believe you can wake up and suddenly be gay. But I do believe you can wake up and realize that you cannot spend the rest of your life without a certain individual.

She is taller than I am, so I have to come up on my toes. I put my hands on her shoulders.

It is not like kissing a man. It’s softer. More intuitive. More equal.

She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before.

And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving.

I have loved before, but it didn’t feel like this.

I have kissed before, but it didn’t burn me alive.

Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it’s an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that, even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.