He clutches the shark tooth in his hand and starts full-out crying. I move to sit on the bed next to him and try to hug him, and he lets me for a little while. Then he pulls away and drags his hand through his hair and sighs.

“I’m sorry I didn’t save him,” he says. “I would have tried.”

My heart aches for him, because those words are my words, and those thoughts are my thoughts, and I finally understand why they don’t matter.

“You couldn’t have saved him,” I answer. “Nobody could have saved Ty but Ty. And you’re probably right. He wasn’t calling so that he would be talked out of it. He was calling to say goodbye.”

Damian nods miserably.

I squeeze his shoulder. “You were a good friend to him. And to me. Thank you for that.”

We sit for a minute not speaking. Then I ask him, “Are you okay? Do you need to write a poem to get it all cleaned out?”

He laughs. “I’ll back off the black-hearted poetry.”

I shrug one shoulder. “I’m not a book critic or anything, but I like your poems, Damian. Although I wouldn’t give you a cup full of pity and pain to drown yourself in. I’m all out of pity.”

I stand up and go to the window. Outside, the sun is setting over the cornfields, a marvelous haze of fire orange and royal purple. I watch a vee of large birds—sandhill cranes, I think—riding the air.

Migrating home.

There is so much inside me in that moment, I feel like I’ll burst. So much I understand now that I didn’t yesterday. So much to say.

“Lex?” Damian asks from behind me. “What are you going to do now?”

I turn. “Actually, do you mind if I borrow a pen?”

31 March

I need to tell you about that night. I know you already know the details. You were there. But I need you to see it from my perspective, so you will understand why I did what I did.

That night we had dinner at the Imperial Palace. You had lemon chicken, like you always do, and I ordered kung pao chicken. Over dinner we were talking about MIT and Harvard and Beaker maybe going to Wellesley and how we had at least 70 days left before we heard anything, and how hard it was to wait. March felt like eons away, that night.

After dinner you took me to the natural history museum at UNL. It was closed for the night, but because your sister works there, she let us in. I knew you were planning something spectacular by the look on Sarah’s face, the way she kept smiling at me. You left me in the elephant hall, staring at the giant fossilized bones of prehistoric mammoths and camels and rhinos that used to roam the grassy plains that once stretched across the middle of the country hundreds of thousands of years ago, while you and Sarah disappeared for a while to set things up.

Then you came and got me. You blindfolded me, but I could tell you were leading me to the planetarium. How many shows had we seen there, Steven, really? You sat me down on a soft blanket. I could smell candle wax and your aftershave. There was music playing—Mozart, I think; you’ll have to tell me sometime, what, exactly it was—a soft serenade of piano and violin.

You took off the blindfold.

We were sitting on a red plaid blanket, like we were having a picnic in the woods, with two short white candles burning in the center, and a bottle of sparkling cider in a bucket of ice, and two plastic champagne glasses. On the planetarium ceiling, thousands of tiny blue lights shone down on us: not stars or constellations, but particles.

“It’s from the show on dark matter,” you said.

I craned my neck to gaze up. “I thought dark matter was invisible.”

You leaned back and put your arm around me, pulling me to your chest, and I relaxed into the heat of your body.

“It is invisible,” you said. “Well, theoretically, it is. Scientists have never been able to prove that dark matter exists, you know.”

I did know.

“We can only truly conceive of the fact that it’s there because of the way the galaxies behave as they move through the universe, and how the light will always bend around it.” You shifted your body closer to mine. You looked down at my lips. I knew you were going to kiss me. Your breath, which smelled like lemons, bathed my face. You looked into my eyes.

“Anyway,” you murmured. “It’s pretty.”

You kissed me. I curled my hand around the back of your head, your hair soft under my fingers, and kissed you back. Blue lights spun over our heads. You kissed the corner of my mouth. My cheek. My ear.

I smiled. “So. This is romantic.”

“Yes. I wanted to be romantic.” You laced your fingers with mine. “It’s December twentieth,” you announced.

“Yes?”

You tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “On June twentieth, six months ago today, we started this little experiment. In a bookstore, which was not the most romantic place, but the best I could do at the moment. I didn’t think I’d be able to get you in here back then. And on June twentieth, I kissed you for the very first time.”

“It was a good kiss.”

“Spectacular,” you remembered.

“So happy six months,” I said.

“Happy six months. Which is precisely 183 days.” You consulted your watch. “Which is 4,392 hours. Which is 263,520 minutes. Which have been some of the best minutes of my life. So far.”

God, you were sexy.

Irresistible.

I pulled your head down to kiss you again, but my phone suddenly buzzed.