Since We Fell

by Dennis Lehane

“A man is the stories he tells about himself, and most of those stories are lies. Never look too closely. If you uncover his lies, it’ll humiliate you both. Best to just live with the bullshit.”

“The game, as I understood it, was that she could never believe I loved her unless I agreed to abide by an unreasonable contract. The unreasonable aspect of the demand was the point. That was her deal breaker—meet me there in the cave of my own insanity or meet me nowhere.”

Felt too the old suspicion that life, as she had thus far experienced it, was a series of detachments. Characters crossed the stage, and some hung around longer than others, but all ultimately exited.

That small smile was all coiled vitality and inflamed reticence. It promised too much and too little at the same time. Lee looked like the worst boyfriend and greatest fuck of all time.

Brian never presumed that the panic attacks were within Rachel’s control. She didn’t have them because she was weak or self-indulgent or prone to drama; she had them because they afflicted her, like any malady of the body—the flu, a cold, meningitis.

“Oh, Rachel,” she heard her mother say, as she’d said more than once, “isn’t it sad that you can only love yourself if someone else gives you permission?”