The sound of the door slamming behind him knocked the breath right out of my lungs. It was a flat, hard crack, final and frightening. It put solid wood between us, filling the spot where a moment before his hurt, beautiful face had been. And why not? The door was no more solid than the wall we'd built against each other, the one we never spoke of but both recognized for what it was. The wall that was preventing us from reaching each other in spite of the ring I wore on my left hand, in spite of the forgivenesses we'd granted and the vows we'd planned to make.

I couldn't touch him when he was standing right in front of me any more than I could reach through that door and fling myself into his arms. The wall was too strong, too real. It was too late to bring him back with kisses, caresses, promises of forever; we'd drifted farther out than we'd ever meant to. We could barely see the shore where we'd begun, and only then when we squinted and strained our eyes.

I think I'm in love with you.

You think, or you know?

I know.

I didn't pick up the phone. That's what you're wondering, isn't it? Well, I didn't. It would have been easy to do it. I even reached out and put my palm on the receiver, feeling the warm hard plastic against my skin and the faint vibration of electricity running through the instrument of betrayal. It would have been deceptively easy to pick it up, press a button, speak a few pleasantries to the man whose intentions I've managed to convince myself I once believed honorable. (I've never been naïve, you see, so deep down I know better.)

What stopped me was the sound of the slamming door that still echoed through the dark and drafty loft. A painting hung slightly askew on the wall over the couch. I looked at it for a long time as I waited for the ringing to stop. At last it did, mercifully, and I cringed against Pacey's voice as the answering machine kicked on. No message, thank God for small favors. I released the breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.

I drifted over to the window wall and looked out at the light-sprinkled night without much hope of seeing him—but needing to, all the same. And I did. He was standing almost directly below me, a shadow in a bulky winter coat, the frosty plumes of his breath stabbing the night air and making me shiver even in the comparable warmth of the apartment.

From this distance I could pretend all was painless and fresh between us again. He could have been on his way to the market on the corner to pick up a carton of ice cream. He always makes fun of me for getting ice cream cravings in the dead of winter. I tell him it's comforting to savor the essence of summertime on your tongue when it's so cold outside you can't walk ten steps without getting the shakes. Ice cream is summer, and summer is childhood, simplicity, lazy afternoons with friends who you're sure will never leave you...

The figure below buttoned up his coat and turned just enough for the moonlight to illuminate his face, and the fantasy snapped in half like a dry twig. For a moment my heart seemed to freeze up in my chest, because in that brief instant I wasn't sure the figure in the shadows below the window was Pacey. My stomach lurched as if a captive passenger on a rapidly dropping elevator. But the feeling passed just as suddenly, and Pacey (yes, it was him, of course it was him, it had only been a trick of the light) started walking down the sidewalk and was swallowed up by the darkness.

The loft seemed too big and too empty when I finally turned away from the window and studied my surroundings. The crooked painting taunted me from its dizzying angle. I walked over to it, reached out to straighten it, and then took my hand away, leaving the painting hanging as it was. I wandered into the bedroom and began to undress, shedding the simple but elegant black gown and leaving it in a melancholy pile on the floor by the closet. Pacey had given me the dress last year, and it had come off just moments after I'd put it on to show him; we'd made love on the floor by the windows. The dress, crumpled up next to the closet, suddenly looked to me like betrayal in fabric form.

I put on an oversized tee-shirt of Pacey's, inhaling deeply as I pulled it over my head. His scent was all over it. Instead of easing my sadness, that fact seemed to make it hurt a bit more. I hugged the shirt to my body and climbed into his side of the bed.

It's funny how something as supposedly strong as one person's love for another can be so easily bruised—even crushed without too much difficulty. And the potential for pain is so immense, triggered by such trivialities as a late night at work, an error in judgement, a badly timed phone call. It makes me wonder for the millionth time if it's worth it. The sixteen-year-old I used to be would have said yes, yes, it's worth it. Cynical as she pretended to be, she was a romantic at heart. A message spray-painted on a rented wall and a lovingly restored sailboat called True Love were all she needed to satisfy any doubts she might have had about the worthwhile nature of following that unknown road. But that sixteen-year-old is gone, and I'm not sure she would really understand the gravity of this no-holds-barred earth-shattering love I currently find myself drowning in.

Even as I'm fighting to pry him out of my heart, I don't want to lose him. But the bitter truth remains: I'm going to drown. And I'll be damned if I'm going to take him down with me.

I turn on my side and press my face into his pillow, wishing he would climb in beside me and wrap his strong, comforting arms around me.

And praying that he wouldn't.