1. This was how life was supposed to be. I was never more sure of anything than I was of that fact. Now, as we stood at what felt like the edge of the world, I knew I'd never ask for anything ever again. This was all I could ever want.

He took my hand, and I took hers, and the three of us stood watching the sun color the water in a hazy wonder, beautiful and rich and more important than anything we'd ever stopped to look at before.

"What now?" she asked, her fingers tight around mine.

I shrugged, squeezing them. "Life."

2. The sky arced over me in a panorama of blue, and I felt like I was witnessing the story of the universe told through the clouds and sun and stars I knew were there unseen. I felt like I was tipping backwards into it.

He said my name.

I crashed to earth with a pleased sigh, and turned to look at him, reading the story of the universe in his eyes.

3. Him being gone for a day was more like an eternity, and I drowned in my loneliness, sitting by a window overlooking my outside world. This was my unintentional meditation. Waitwaitwait because life wasn't important without him.

She tried to coax me into rehearsing, but singing was a waste of time without him; it didn't matter how I sounded if he couldn't be there to hear me.

So, when he came walking up the front path, my heart sang more loudly than ever.

4. If I sat in just the right position, my fingers could discreetly grasp the end of his scarf so that I didn't have to go without touching some part of him. My hands itched whenever he wasn't beneath them, and then I couldn't concentrate on anything for the life of me.

Sometimes, my tugging fingers on his scarf would irritate him, like today, and he'd adjust it, subtly pulling it away and out of reach except if I intentionally made a move to grab it.

I lost focus with my hands empty and faltered in answering the question put to me, so with a soft sigh, he shifted, letting his scarf fall back into my waiting grasp, because without something, I couldn't do it. I couldn't be this without him.

5. This was the way I imagined it. In the middle of a winter night, standing in the street as the snow showered us with its holy softness, the orange light of the streetlamp lighting us for each other, to be seen in all our nervous inexperience, breaths misting white between us to kiss in the night air clandestinely before dispersing into the cold.

But, the way it happened, as we lay wrapped up in his sheets on his bed, sticky with the hot summer night, our lips mashed together desperately - there wasn't any way it could have been better than that.

6. The keys on the piano were melancholy no matter where I pushed them. Every note was the beginning of a different sad song that I was writing in his heart every second that passed. My fingers moved automatically, like they understood more than I did what was going on inside me.

My own song of longing and heartbreak terrified me, and I spread my fingers, smashing them on the keys to create a deafening roar of discordance.

He frowned, walking by. "It's out of tune."

I stared at it. "I know."

7. This of course was the last place either of us should be, but how could we escape? We were bound by a million pairs of eyes waiting for us to do something contrary to the image that we put forth. Everyone was waiting to be triumphant or disappointed in who we were, and there was no way either of us could break character now.

What would that mean for everyone? What would happen to us then? We grasped hands tightly for the recitation of the "Our Father," bowing our heads, praying harder than we ever had before.

"Forgive us our trespasses."

8. She watched us as we packed, since she had finished hours ago. We had a  soft graceful choreography to how we moved around each other, just brushing by to show affection without getting in the way of one another, like we knew each other's next move or thought better than we knew our own.

The snap of suitcases always struck her as so profound, especially when it was us making the sound. We turned to look at her, and she stood, studying us.

"Hey, what happens when you're packing to leave for good?"

I smiled sadly. "We'll just have to take you with us, won't we?"

9. I stood behind the microphone, holding the stand like a cane, because it was the only thing keeping me on my feet at this point. The encore was over, the show was over. The audience screamed, roaring through my ears like a freight train. I could barely seem them for the lights in my eyes. I didn't know how many people had their eyes on me right now. That seemed to be the last thing that mattered.

He yelled my name over the tumult of fans cheering, and somehow, I could hear him. His hand was outstretched.

My feet moved forward somehow, and I took his hand, and her hand, and we bowed in unison. I felt a rush of vertigo. The edge of the stage appeared temptingly close. If I fell into that mass of people, would it swallow me up forever?

My hand stayed in his as we walked off the stage. Forever seemed like a very long time.

10. The pages flipped themselves through the air as I held the book by its back cover, watching them fall. I turned it over, letting the pages slide by again in a blur of ink and paper and a story I'd never read. This was gravity at work.

I looked up, smiling as he entered the room. Yes. Gravity.