Fire like fear, like panic, like one more minute of this and I'll die if he doesn't knock at my door, but I'd sooner he never knock than knock now.

So I waited. Then I got used to waiting. Eventually, waiting was more real than what we had.

But I also knew that I was circling wagons around my life with try again laters, and that months, seasons, entire years, a lifetime could go by with nothing but Saint Try-again-later stamped on every day. Try again later worked for people like Oliver. If not later, when? was my shibboleth.If not later, when? What if he had found me out and uncovered each and every one of my secrets with those four cutting words?

If I had a tumor, then I'd be dead before the year was out, and if I were dead, then there'd be nothing left, no second chances, no leap-year parties, and this waiting for the right time would have been for nothing. I will have died having lived the wrong life. No, not lived: waited.