The night Dimitri went home, after quitting his teaching job, he drank all of the wine he could find in his house. Slumped against the living room wall, he read Accidentally on Purpose, cringing at his adolescent self- pity, at his pretentious meditations on love that now looked as insightful as the notes his students passed around during class. "Cheryl, I've never felt this way about anyone before. Meet me in my van after Bio.-John" He kept seeing Grace's eyes as she pleaded him to wait, "is there a message in it?" her restraint when she asked him if she could still send him her story. He laughed to himself. For once she was showing restraint, and it was too late. He emptied the glass, poured another one, and attempt to think like a rational adult. It's over, he told himself, he was foolish but he'd finally done the right thing, just in time to keep himself from going to prison, from losing his license. No doubt Grace's parents saw him as a criminal, a middle-aged creep who lured their innocent daughter away from her safe, sanitary suburban life and into a seedy, lurid world. But he had made his own peace with what had happened, and it didn't matter how others distorted the facts, they could only see the distortions. But he had seen the truth broken open like an amethyst rock and he was certain that whatever consequences he would have to endure would be insignificant one day. Nothing would last but what remained in his memory. He closed his eyes and sighed, letting his body fall limp against the wine-stained carpet. Although his eyes were burning, and his shoulders still felt heavy where she had placed her hands when she'd kissed him, he was glad it was over. Because now it was in the past, and he could choose to remember it as he wished, leaving out the mundane details that everyone took so seriously, not knowing that they were grasping at the only things that meant nothing.