On your computer, a gangly scientist was talking about how we live in an error code within fields of data; how the smaller the cell is, the greater its surface area, and therefore, the greater the amount of data it can carry. And how that means that the parts of something are in fact greater than the whole, because the inside of something can contain far more information than the outside of that thing. And how can I be more than I am but also less? As we hugged, I heard a nerdy voice say, “Our brains are getting smaller,” and you told me as you buried your head deeper into my neck that over the course of the past two thousand years, human beings had lost a tennis ball’s worth of brain mass; that we were parting with the things we didn’t need anymore.

At some point I looked out at your windows and saw myself hugging you, and for a moment, as if the event was too private even for me to witness, I felt embarrassed by myself and realized that that was what shame was. There I was again, afraid to be loving, afraid to be weak. Afraid you couldn’t be loved if you were weak even though this fear was the real weakness. I thought about all the tears I had cried with you, all of our joint lamentations, the pain we caused and eased for each other. Where were all those teardrops now? In some alternate universe they had been shed, too, but never dried, and they formed a sea beneath our feet. I imagined the liquid in the soft glow of your room.

A few milliseconds had gone by since I had seen my face in the glass and now I felt pride stir up inside me for the beauty implicit in our complicated friendship, something I sometimes chided myself for not having the strength to give up and other times felt so grateful for and proud to have sustained. As if pain enriched it and made it ugly at the same time. We gravitated between the two extremes and therein lay the pearl. You rubbed my thighs the way you always had, maybe the way you always would. After my fourth goodbye we smoked a cigarette outside together and after my fifth we did headstands on your hair-covered carpet and my calm, while upside-down, clarified how cathartic this had all been for me. I rarely knew what I felt—I was decidedly indecisive about my feelings—except for that day.

At one point we talked about love and my perceived inability to feel it and I could sense you smile on my skin as you said that romantic relationships are just made up of friends who “do stuff.” I loved that. I loved that that is how you see it and maybe how many other people see it, too. I said I wasn’t sure that I knew how to love even my friends and I tried to formulate the words but the ugly thought stayed stuck in me—about how it’s hard to give when you are constantly worrying about whether or not people will love you.

When I had first arrived at the house that night, Toni and I had somehow begun talking about eye contact and that is what started all of this. With her elbows on the sticky floral tablecloth I had had so many dinners on, she held my hands and tried to hold my gaze with hers. I felt myself start to sweat and then—as though I thought it would help—I vocalized my discomfort out loud in quick snatches of breathless words, hoping that would make her eyes leave my face. My shoulders bunched up by my ears and I felt myself break into a sweat as I started to cry.

The funny thing, of course, is that the next day I met you. That I wrote and cried the night away and then, in the morning, on the last day of the first month, life gave way to you. That as the sun slept I could not get out of my head how stunted and warped I was; how much I feared something as simple as looking another human being in the eye. But—funniest of all—that just a few minutes into meeting you, I knew that I would be able to make eye contact with you for as long as I could keep my eyes open, until I forgot to blink and hot tears poured down my face. Something in me wanted you to know: Yes, I see you, and the things I see are beautiful.

When I think back to that morning, I’m surprised by how little I remember. Just a snatch of images and the explosive feeling afterwards; these are what color the day. I see you smiling over the stove, speaking quietly as you flip the contents of the pan (you are grilling octopus). Your shy, self-effacing smile and the quiet chuckle that comes out of nowhere, and then, of course, the graceful way you carry yourself; your words measured and soft-spoken.

I ask you out a few hours after meeting you and I know even before sending the message, even before we speak for four days straight, even before we lie in bed together, that my life is about to change. (I could really love you.) That we will have something even though I am moving to the other side of the world. I consider saying nothing but I know, somehow, that my silence would be a huge mistake, maybe the worst mistake of my life; that sometimes the biggest mistakes are the quiet, wordless ones.

When I talk to you, my body feels like it is buzzing. My hands and feet are cold, which is how I know I’m nervous. It feels like I can’t move. I am heavy like glue and there is sweat between my toes. I can feel the static trapped inside; all of the potential energy waiting to express and erase itself. A few days later, you are there—miraculously, it has happened just the way that I dreamed—and your face is pressed against mine, our eyes wide and locked together the way people’s eyes go wide when they’re surprised, except that ours stay like that for hours, as if reacting in slow motion. ♦