“No. No. But there’s a difference between just passing time and . . .”

“And staying. And committing. And actually trying. Is that what you mean?”

“I . . .” I what? Am speechless? Confused? Scared? I don’t know what to say, or what he wants. We’re friends. Good friends. Who have sex. Who were always going to go their separate ways—like everyone does. “Levi, this was

never meant to . . . I’m just trying to be honest.”

“Honest.” He lets out a noiseless, bitter laugh; stares at the hummingbird feeder, his tongue roaming the inside of his cheek. “Honesty. You want some honesty?”

“Yes. I just want to be as honest as possible—”

“Here’s the honesty: I’m in love with you. But that’s not news. Not to me, and not to you, I don’t think. Not if you’re honest with yourself—which you say you are, right?” My eyes widen. He powers on, ruthless, merciless. Levi Ward: force of nature. Sucking the air out of my lungs. “Here’s something else that’s honest: you’re in love with me, too.”

“Levi.” I shake my head, panic licking up my spine. “I—”

“But you’re scared. You’re scared shitless, and I don’t blame you. Tim was a piece of shit and I want to cut off his balls. Your best friend acted supremely selfishly when you needed her the most. Your parents died when you were a child, and then your extended family—I don’t know, maybe they tried their best, but they completely fucked up at giving you the sense of stability you needed. Your sister, whom you clearly adore, is constantly

gone, and don’t think I don’t see the way you obsessively check your phone when she doesn’t reply to your texts for longer than ten minutes. And I get it. Why wouldn’t you be afraid that she’ll be taken away from you? Everyone else was. Every single person you’ve cared about has disappeared from your life, one way or another.” I don’t know how he manages to look so angry, so calm, so compassionate at the same time. “I understand.

I can be patient. I’ve tried, will try to be patient. But I need . . . something. I need you to understand that this is not a book you’re writing. We’re not—

not two characters you can keep apart because it makes for a literary ending. These are our lives, Bee.”

There’s a tear sliding down my neck. Another, a wet splotch against my collarbone. I screw my eyes shut. “When we went to the conference? And I saw Tim?” He nods. “It was upsetting. Very. But after a while I realized that I didn’t really feel anything for him, not anymore, and it was . . . nice. That’s what I want, you know? I want nice.” I’ve had so little of it. I was always, always being left behind. And the only way to not be left behind is to leave first. I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand, sniffling. “If nice means being alone, then . . . so be it.”

“I can give you nice. I can give you better than nice. I can give you everything.” He smiles at me, full of hope. “You don’t even have to admit to yourself that you love me, Bee. God knows I love you enough for the both of us. But I need you to stay. I need you to stick around. Not in Houston, if you don’t want to. I’ll follow you, if you ask me to. But—”

“And when you get tired of me?” I’m a wet, trembling mess. “When you can’t be around anymore? When you meet someone else?”

“I won’t,” he says, and I hate how sure, how resigned he sounds.

“You don’t know that. You can’t know that. You—”

“There hasn’t been anyone else.” His jaw tenses and works. “Since the first moment I saw you. Since the first moment I talked to you and made an ass of myself, there hasn’t been anyone else.”

Does he— He doesn’t mean it. He can’t mean that.

“Yes,” he says ardently, reading my mind. “In all the ways you’re imagining. If you’re going to decide, you should have the facts. I know you’re scared—do you think

I’m not scared?”

“Not the way I am—”

“I spent years—years—hoping to find another who could measure up.

Hoping to feel something—anything—for someone else. And now you’re here, and—I have had you, Bee. I know how it can be. You think I don’t know what it feels like, to want something so much you’re afraid to let yourself take it? Even when it’s in front of you? Do you think I’m not fucking scared?”

He exhales, running a hand through his hair. “Bee. You want to belong. You want someone who won’t let go. I’m it. I didn’t let go of you for years, and I didn’t even have you. But you need to let me.”

It’s difficult, looking at him. Because my eyes are blurry. Because he leaves me nothing to hide behind. Because it reminds me of the past few weeks together. Elbows brushing in the kitchen. Cat puns. Fights over what music to put on in the car—and then talking over it anyway. Kisses on the forehead when I’m still asleep. Little bites on my breasts, my hips, my neck, all over me. The smell of hummingbird mint, right before sunset. Laughing because we made a six-year-old laugh. His wrong opinions on Star Wars. The way he holds me through the night. The way he holds me when I need him.

I think of the past few weeks with him. Of a lifetime without him. Of what it would do to me, to have even more and then lose all of it. I think of everything I’ve made myself give up. Of the cats I won’t allow myself to adopt. Of the gut-wrenching work that goes into mending a broken heart.

Levi cups my face, forehead touching mine. His hands— they are my home. “Bee. Don’t take this from us,” he

murmurs. Ragged. Careful. Hopeful. “Please.”

I’ve never wanted anything more than to say yes. I’ve never wished to reach for something as I do now. And I’ve never been so utterly, petrifyingly scared to lose something.

I make myself look at Levi. My voice shakes, and I say,

“I’m sorry. I just . . . I can’t.”

He closes his eyes, staving off a violent wave of something. But after a while he nods. He just nods, without saying anything. A simple, quick movement. Then he lets go of me, puts his hand in his pocket, takes something out, and sets it on the table. The loud click echoes through the room. “This is for you.”

My heart gives a hard thud. “What is it?”

He gives me a small, pained smile. My stomach twists harder. “Just something else to be scared about.”

I stare at the door long after he is gone. Long after I can’t hear his steps anymore. Long after the noise of his truck’s engine pulls out of the parking lot. Long after I’ve exhausted my tears, and long after my cheeks dry. I stare at the door, thinking that in just two days I’ve lost everything I care about, all over again.

Maybe bad things do come in threes after all.

24

RIGHT TEMPORAL LOBE: AHA!

MIGHT BE A bit late in the game to pull my mad-scientist origin story out of its holster, but I’m sitting in the dark, staring at a less-than-flattering reflection of my splotchy face in the balcony doors, the purple of my hair nearly brown—a trick of the light. Someone just ransacked my pockets and stole my most important belongings, and that someone is me. I’m feeling very Dr. Marie SkłodowskaCurie, circa 1911, and I guess it’s self-disclosure o’clock.

Originally, I wanted to be a poet. Like my mom. I’d write little sonnets about all sorts of stuff: the rain, pretty birds, the mess Reike made in the kitchen when she tried to bake a cherry pie, kittens playing with yarn—the works. Then we turned ten, and we moved for the fourth time in five years, this time to a mid-sized French town at the border with Germany, where my father’s eldest brother had a construction business. He was kind. His wife was kind, if strict. His kids, in their late teens, were kind. The town was kind.

My sister’s best friend, Ines, was kind. There was lots of kindness going around.

A couple of weeks after moving, I wrote my first poem about loneliness.

Frankly, it was embarrassingly bad. Ten-year-old Bee was an emo princess of darkness. I’d quote the most dramatic verses here, but then I’d have to kill myself and everyone who read them. Still, at the time I fancied myself the next Emily Dickinson, and I showed the poem to one of my teachers (full-body cringe intensifies). She zeroed in on the first line, which would roughly translate from French to “Sometimes, when I’m alone, I feel my brain shrink,” and told me, “That’s what really happens. Did you know that?” I hadn’t. But in the early 2000s the internet was already a thing, and by the end of the day, when Reike came home from an afternoon at Ines’s place, I knew a lot about The Lonely Brain.

It doesn’t shrink, but it withers a little. Loneliness is not abstract and intangible—metaphors about desert islands and mismatched shoes, Edward Hopper’s characters staring at windows, Fiona Apple’s entire discography.

Loneliness is here. It molds our souls, but also our bodies. Right inferior temporal gyri, posterior cingulates, temporoparietal junctions, retrosplenial cortices, dorsal raphe. Lonely people’s brains are shaped differently. And I just want mine to . . . not be. I want a healthy, plump, symmetrical cerebrum.

I want it to work diligently, impeccably, like the extraordinary machine it’s supposed to be. I want it to do as it’s told.

Spoiler alert: my stupid brain doesn’t. It never did. Not when I was ten.

Not when I was twenty. Not eight years later, even though I’ve tried my best to train it not to expect anything of me. If alone’s the baseline, it shouldn’t