“It won’t change it,” I say. “That I love you. Just tell me, please, before you go—do you love me? Could you ever love me?” For a fleeting moment, I think she’s going to answer. Her eyelashes flutter and her breathing catches and her face is all delicate longing and hope and pain. But then it shuts down, snuffed out like a candle. She pushes past me without answering, and I’m left in the kitchen, naked and alone and—for the first time in my life—utterly heartbroken.
