“What you don’t understand,” I tell him, my voice catching, “is that I don’t even know my own heart anymore. I don’t know how to name what I feel yet and I need time to figure it out. You want more right now but right now what I need is for you to be my friend—” Warner flinches. “I do not have friends,” he says. “Why can’t you try?” He shakes his head. “Why? Why not give it a chance—” “Because I am afraid,” he finally says, voice shaking, “that your friendship would be the end of me.”
