A woman who wanted was an ugly thing. I knew it made me childish and vulnerable. My whole life had taught me that lesson. But still. For one moment, laid out on the grass, all my ruined, pointless, pent-up wanting was too great to contain— I threw open the doors to my heart. The pain flooded in. I’d wanted so many things and lost them all. This was the cost. I lay on the grass and sobbed. The stars looked on, cold and unblinking.
