I fell in love. It was an accident, and I had no intentions of it. My dad doesn’t think there’s any such thing. Before Noah, I didn’t, either… I got that from my dad. I’ve never really been much of a believer. A realist, you could call me. Not really one to “fall” into anything. He says the only true love is God, and all else is imperfectly unreal. He says love is just lust and infatuation, all mashed up into a messy sort of teenage fantasy. [Beat] But that’s not love, because what I have is nothing like that. Maybe it’s just as stupid. Stupider. ‘Cause, I don’t know, when you open yourself up to someone, that one someone who you’d just… do anything for… you lose yourself. It becomes a “we” and not an “I”. And if they don’t get the same stars in their eyes that you do, that leaves you half a person. [Beat] I can spend my time pretending though. Thinking about him. Noah, who crinkles his nose when he laughs and throws pumpkins off rooftops for fun. We do those things together. Midnight, mid-winter swimming. Dart-throwing at oak trees. Sleepovers in the forest, when I turned over in the morning and thought his freckles looked like constellations. I met the rest of me at four months old, and I’ve been with him every day since. [Deep breath] I used to believe in time. Now I think we just imagine it all. I believed that, in time, I could light his eyes up with those stars. But he couldn’t see me cry, and I don’t think he ever really knew. For a while, it was perfect to just be in a world where he was. I know better now, a little too late. I know not to let somebody become a piece of me when I’m already in pieces. Because for every lie he told me… I told myself ten.