I woke up the next morning already knowing I was going to do the wrong thing.
I don't mean wrong the way the night before had been wrong … that had been wrong in the particular way true things sometimes are, wrong the way telling the truth is wrong when a lie would have been kinder, wrong the way opening a window feels wrong in a room that's been sealed shut for far too long.
I understood that specific kind of wrong. I'd already made my peace with it somewhere around three in the morning, lying awake replaying the shape of his mouth against mine.
This was different. This was me sitting on the edge of my bed in the flat morning light, thinking about my mother's voice on the phone, about my father's easy laugh at Sunday dinner, about the particular way my grandmother held my hand across
