2016 ended. The world kept fracturing. But somewhere in the wreckage of that year, a man and a woman learned the hardest lesson: sometimes you meet your soulmate, and your soulmate is a mirror. And a mirror shows you exactly what you are—including the parts you cannot change.
Instead, he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by reels of tape. His silence project. He played her a recording from the night before—her breathing, the rustle of sheets, the sigh she made when she turned over. It was intimate and invasive. "This is the real you," he said. "The you when no one is watching. I want that one. Not the one who goes to coffee with her past." A MAN AND A WOMAN -2016-
By spring, they had moved in together. The apartment had a claw-foot tub and a radiator that wept steam. They were both thirty-three. Old enough to have scars, young enough to pretend they were just tattoos. 2016 ended