There aren’t perfect moments in life, not really, not when shit has gotten as weird as it can get and you’re broke in a mean city and the things that hurt feel so big. But there’s the wind flying and the weight of months and a girl hanging out an emergency exit, train roaring all around, tunnel lights flashing, and it feels perfect.

You are", he says, "the absolute worst idea I've ever had.

History, huh?

And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occured to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it?

Because you’re it, okay? I’m never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you.

You are a delinquent and a plague. Please come.

I know things aren't perfect, but at least if I stayed, it'd be different. And I could be with you. All this - this whole mess - it scares the shit out of me. But the thought of staying with you doesn't scare me at all.

On the map of you, my fingers could always find the green hills, Wales. Cool waters and a shore of white chalk. The ancient part of you carved out of stone in a prayerful circle, sacrosanct. Your spine's a ridge I'd die climbing. If I could spread it out on my desk, I'd find the corner of your mouth where it pinches with my fingers, and I'd smooth it away and you'd be marked with the names of saints like all the old maps. I get the nomenclature now- saints' names belong to miracles

It's impossible to know if he moves first or if Henry does, but they meet in the middle of the room, Henry's arms around Alex's neck, swallowing him up. If Henry's voice on the phone was a tether, his body is the gravity that makes it possible, his hand gripping the back of Alex's neck a magnetic force, a permanent compass north.