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they wanted declarations of undying love, but once they got them, those confessions were taken for granted. That, or you were rejected for being too clingy, dependent, or insecure—all words Zoe tossed out during the week leading up to the breakup.
    “Girls expect you to love them forever, and they say they feel the same, but they really mean until I get bored with you .” I was well on my way to becoming a very bitter sixteen-year-old boy.
    Cassie was twenty-two, and had been through her share of relationships by that point. She’d not yet met Doug, and wouldn’t for another three years and one more failed relationship. Sitting at her kitchen table in the tiny walkup she shared with two other girls, we faced a window overlooking a courtyard of dead grass and gravel. The remainder of the view consisted of an adjacent, equally dilapidated building and no sky at all.
    “Graham, not all girls will be like that.”
    Torn between despair and hope, I said, “Hmph,” and gulped from the soda can she handed me when I sat down. She grabbed my hand, wanting to fix everything for me, I know, but she was as powerless to remedy what had happened as I was. The combination of her commiseration and another wave of Zoe thoughts made my throat ache. Yanking my hand from beneath hers, I stared out the viewless window. I didn’t want to cry over Zoe anymore. I wanted to be angry. Anger was so much easier to work with.
    Cassie sighed. “Someday, you’ll find a girl who can handle the intense way you love. Who isn’t intimidated by it—because that’s what this is. Zoe can’t feel this profoundly about anything or anyone. She’s shallow and self-centered. And she’s blown the chance at a wonderful guy.”
    I hadn’t believed her, of course—that I’d find a girl like that, someone other than Zoe.
    I still didn’t quite believe it last night, when Emma kissed me, and everything I’d dreamed of with her flashed before my eyes.
    Now, I’m visualizing us walking these streets together, alone or with Cara between us. I picture her sleeping in my bed. I imagine her accompanying me on location during breaks from school. Then everything speeds up and I watch her walk across a stage to accept her diploma. I see myself sliding a ring on her finger and promising her eternity and lifting a veil and kissing her.
    If she hadn’t sent that text at 2 a.m. last night, I might have let her go. I might have never confessed how I felt about her. I was so afraid of wanting too much that I couldn’t trust her handing me a shot at getting it. I don’t want to be that senselessly fearful ever again.
    Our outer hands shoved into our respective hoodie pockets, I hold Emma’s left hand in my right, deep inside my pocket. We end up on a bench in front of her hotel, the minutes ticking away, nothing to be done but let them fall until she’s gone.
    “What happens now?” she says, just as I was going to ask if taking her to meet Cassie was too uncomfortable for her. Too much, too soon.
    I swallow my question and answer hers. “Now, we run up the minutes on our cell phones and we text, and Skype, and in less than five weeks, I’ll be in LA and so will you.” Then I realize that I’m not sure if she means now , this second, or now , this point in our newly established relationship. She chews her lip, and I say, “If all you meant was what are we doing for the next half hour , please don’t tell me, because I’ll feel like an idiot.”
    She laughs. “No, I’m good with the five week plan.”
    What about a five year plan? I think. But instead of voicing that, I take her face in my hands and kiss her.
    *** *** ***
    Emma
    Dad sleeps during the flight. I try to read but can’t concentrate, so I end up reading and rereading the same passages until it’s just ridiculous and I give up and stare out at the blue sky. The cottony clouds below us come in transient batches, alternatively showing and obscuring the miles and miles of nothing, towns and