27. Dependency
Really, without him she is nothing. This knowledge is like a deep throbbing in her mind, a malignant tumor—or perhaps more subtle, a form of arrhythmia, the fluttered and off-kilter beatings of her heart. Four chambers dependent upon a solitary thing, breathing equals oxygen equals existence, please god.
(This is nothing but a bizarre, desperate imagining, and she wonders if she is at all essential to him—this man who is her whole world, who allows her into that gregarious space around him. Herself, a timid and frightened moon floating uncertainly around him, the greater, essential gravitational force.)