“I’ve got to think, to figure this one out. There’s got to be a way.”

The cigarette helps, nicotine pushes blood into the brain. It had happened so suddenly, so completely and overwhelmingly. He had been in love before: the girl down the street, his fifth grade teacher and that wild druggie he took to the prom. But this, this is different!

He hadn’t noticed how, over the years, he had constructed in his imagination the being that was his true love. It was not just how she looked inside his mind, it was how she behaved, how she held him, how her hair fell over her breast like mist drifting down a ridge. Because she was there with him every day and all day she was taken for granted. Until, just now, he had seen her, right there at the street corner. The exact image, every motion precisely as he already knew, even as she slipped handcuffed into the back seat of the sheriff’s cruiser.