Call Me by Your Name

by André Aciman

“So you won’t tell me?” “So I won’t tell you.” “So he won’t tell me,” he repeated,

Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second.

I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”