Hello Beautiful

by Ann Napolitano

Julia had no interest in sports and didn’t understand the rules, but her handsome boyfriend had sprinted and leapt and spun with such pure physicality, and such intensity of focus, that she had found herself thinking: yes.

Sylvie suddenly felt sad, and her voice sounded sad too—was there some basic human truth that if you were naked, you couldn’t control the tone of your voice? Like, her voice was naked too?

It occurred to him, for the first time, that just because you never thought about someone didn’t mean they weren’t inside you.