Preface

In my search for truth I'd become the lie, I'd taken someone I loved from a best friend. Maybe secrets should remain secrets, drowning in shadowed waters. My secret had been fished out by cleverly placed bait. A worm, a worm filled with beautiful words.

"You're different." He tells me.

"You're the only you." I can hear him from memory; I almost feel his breath on my ear.

"You're the only you means that there's no one else like you, anywhere. I can't feel what I feel with anyone else but you. When I look in your eyes, when you look in mine, when they lock. I see everything, everything that is you. I see our love unfolding. And I fall in love with you every single time. It's surreal. That's why I love you." He whispers before I can ask what he already knew was on my mind. Recalling his touch, his calloused thumb nearly grazes my shoulder.

"I have my life, you have yours…." I tilt my head down, my hair curtains my face hoping to shut out the embarrassment.

"But…then we have ours, we have us. Something only we know about. This is ours." I try to look at him barely seeing his silhouette through heavy weighted tears. "Let us have this, if we can't have forever." The remembrance stings my eyes.

We can't have forever. That should have been a warning, a red flag, a sign; a caution to prevent me from the downward spiral I would fall into if I believed his words. But, I did. And I fell. In every possible way.