The intensity of my feelings for him in that moment, so acute and unyielding, transcended everything that had come before. He was still the boy I’d loved three, four summers ago, but that love had matured inside me like wine in a barrel, and it was more robust and vinous than it had ever been. I’d learned so much in the years we’d been apart. I’d studied in one of the greatest institutions in the world, I’d met friends and lovers who had changed me inexorably with their wisdom, generosity, and kindness, and yet, in the loving of this person who had never offered me any of these things, I was
...more
