One Last Thing Before I Go

of her.
    And she is just so pretty.
    “You seem like a very kind person,” he says.
    She laughs, surprised. “You don’t have much of a game, do you?”
    “No. I guess I don’t.”
    She meets his gaze and holds it, and he holds hers, and it’s an effort for both of them, and he feels a thrill building. The air shimmers between them like fairy dust. He wonders if she sees it too. Something is happening here. There are words he can say right now that will elevate them from strangers to something more, and he would give anything to know what those words are. And then they come to him, and he smiles, knowing that he will say them, and she will hear them, and the universe will change in a profound and permanent way.
    And that’s when Jack sucker-punches the muscle-head at the bar, and a minor fracas breaks out.
    * * *
    No one has patience for another stupid bar fight, and the whole thing fizzles fairly quickly. The guy Jack hit has youth and size going for him, but Jack has Silver, who steps in, looking to break it up, and ends up being knocked off balance and falling down against the bar in a fuzzy haze. There follows a good deal of shouting and jostling, and then, suddenly, in the midst of the chaos, he sees Lily’s face, hovering above his, the hint of a wry smile at the corners of her mouth.
    “That was fast,” she says.
    “The good fighters always finish fast.”
    Her laugh is instant and lovely. Silver looks up at her in a way that makes her look at him funny. “What?” she says.
    “I want to kiss you.”
    She grins. “This doesn’t really seem like the right time.”
    Behind them, he is vaguely aware of Jack cursing a blue streak as management drags him out of the bar.
    “It will after the fact,” he says. “When you tell the story.”
    “So there’s going to be a story? That must be some kiss you’re planning.”
    “It might be my last one.”
    “What, are you dying or something?”
    “I might be. It’s not clear yet.”
    She looks at him, really looks at him, trying to understand the things about him that he himself doesn’t, and he finds himself smitten anew by her simple sincerity.
    “Well then,” Lily says. “I guess you had better get to it.”
    She offers him her hand, and he climbs to his feet. The room wobbles around him for a minute before becoming completely still. He looks at Lily. She has been lonely. He recognizes this as only another lonely person can—that small, almost invisible edge in her expression that comes from too many solitary meals and movies, too much time spent in worthless introspection, too much time spent regretting a past that can’t be undone. This is someone who is ready to be loved, he thinks.
    “I like you,” he tells her.
    “It’s your funeral,” she says with a grin.
    “You have no idea.” He pulls her close exactly the way someone with confidence would, and he kisses her mouth. Her lips collapse against his in a manner that feels like surrender and conquest simultaneously, and he is flooded with a sweet desire he hasn’t felt in years. When it ends, the room wobbles around him for a minute before becoming completely still.
    And then he does it again.
    * * *
    He loved a girl once; for no particular reason, just a lot of little ones thrown together. Isn’t that what love is, anyway? The sum of a million intangibles that all come together in just the right way at just the right time? Like conception. Or the universe. He loved her before he met her, which isn’t as romantic as it sounds, because for some people, loving at a distance comes naturally. And then they did meet, and when she smiled at him through the shimmering air he felt it in his belly. He took her home with him—they didn’t discuss it, it just became their presumed destination—and the sex was sex: exciting, intimate, and awkward. These things take time. But afterward, after they had dispensed with it like a formality, they lay in bed speaking in low voices, confessing any sins that came to mind, absolving each other the way only near strangers can. Then it was morning, and she was dressing to leave, and as he kissed her good-bye, he was overwhelmed by the notion that they were, in fact, still strangers to each other, and he couldn’t for the life of him see how to get from there to somewhere else. The whole notion of building a relationship from scratch seemed like a vast and complex enterprise, the thought of which was instantly exhausting. And yet . . .
    In spite of