You Know Me Well

by Nina LaCour

“Were you abducted? Lured away by a stranger with candy? Or maybe you saw a cat in a tree and felt you had to save it? Was there an old queen trying to cross the street, and you had to help? No, wait—I know. You heard about a top-secret Sleater-Kinney concert in an abandoned BART station, but you weren’t allowed to tell anyone about it—not even your very best friend. That has to be it. Because if you are not bodily harmed, and if you were not at some secret show, or if you were not saving someone’s life, why would you leave here without saying a word and then not respond when I call you and text you a thousand times?”

“Fortune does have a strange way of smiling, doesn’t it?”

There isn’t any explanation. Just the artist’s name, Nic Pierce. But I don’t think I need an explanation. I know, instinctively, that this has happened, that this is true. Nic Pierce found it. The kiss that lasts for years.