"My flight was almost empty, and they gave us pretzels, and my dad was dead."

"But oh, what power there was when Ben said my name."

"getting down to business (to defeat the Huns). (Sex, I mean sex.)"

“You did say romance was dead.” I tilted my head, looking at his reflection in the mirror. “Aren’t you?”

‘Love is a celebration,’ ” I read, my voice wobbling, “ ‘of life and death. It stays with you. It lingers, my darlings, long after I’m gone. Listen for me when the wind rushes through the trees. I love you.’ ”

As an English major, I had studied rising actions, I had charted climaxes. Making love and making stories were close to the same thing. You were intimate and vulnerable and wandering, traveling across the landscape of each other, learning. You told a story with each gesture, each sound—every kiss a period, every gasp a comma.