I knew a sudden shyness. There was a look on his face, a stillness to his body that had never been there before. Though I couldn’t give the emotion a name, I felt it, too. We had something special. Something hard to define. Something past friendship.“I must go now,” I said and rose up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, marveling at its velvet skin. “Thank you for the book.”He drew me into his embrace and sighed. “Thank you for the stars.

Friend. Before Mark, I’d known its definition. Now I knew its meaning.

Strange how knowing our story had no happy ending had freed us to live in the moment. We weren’t guy and girl. We weren’t damaged and terminal. We were just now.

The better I know you, the more incredible you are.