He sat down in his chair, leaned into his forearms over a snow-white sheet of paper set precisely in the center of his desk. He smiled. “How are you?” I could tell he was trying to be careful—like a doctor bearing both good news and bad. “Fine,” I said. I was thinking, This is such a small moment, housed in such a small space, but it will spin like a planet in my memory. Peter’s body and mine had hardly ever touched. He’d never held my hand or my waist; we’d never occupied the same material space for longer than a class period. Yet I had given him my words.
