The Secret in Their Eyes

by Eduardo Sacheri

“It’s the shittiest word I know,” he said, and then he was off again, but I never for a minute thought we were having a conversation; it was an interior monologue he was speaking aloud out of pure distraction. “ ‘I love you, but …’; ‘That could be, but …’; ‘It’s not serious, but …’; ‘I tried, but …’ See what I mean? It’s a shitty word people use to annihilate what was, or could have been, but isn’t.”