SERENA POV
He did not reach for me when we came into the room.
He crossed to the desk, turned the lamp to its lowest setting, and sat on the edge of the bed. He looked at me and waited. It was the right thing to do, and I noted that he knew it without being told.
I sat beside him. Not close. A space remained between us, the space of everything unresolved and everything unnamed. Three weeks, seven days, and seven years compressed into the distance between two people sitting on the same mattress.
"I'm going to say something," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"And I need you to just listen," I said. "Not respond. Not explain."
"Yes," he said.
I looked at my hands. "I loved you at twenty-two," I said. "Completely. Without strategy or calculation. In a way I have not loved anything since, which
