“But isn’t intimacy just…there…or not?” Freya asks after a moment’s silence. “As long as you’re still both committed to each other, it should be there, right?” “Oh, goodness, no.” Dr. Dietrich sips her tea, then glances between us. “Intimacy isn’t intuition. It isn’t even familiarity. Intimacy is work. Sometimes it’s happy work, like picking sun-ripened apples that drop effortlessly from the tree, and other times, it’s like foraging for truffle mushrooms—down on your knees, messy, inefficient; it takes digging up dirt and perhaps coming up empty on your first attempt, before you find the
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