“So if my past is catching up to me, Aerin, I can take care of it. I made my bed, and I can lie in it …” she’d continued to argue.

“A bed which you’ve invited me into,” I’d batted back, and, with a quickness that surprised her, I’d flipped her to her side so that we both lay on our sides facing each other. As quickly as I’d tipped her over, I’d also flipped her metaphor to another meaning. “A bed I’d like to sleep in for many, many more nights with you, if you let me.”

She’d recovered from her surprise, and had let go of my hands and snaked her arms around my neck. She’d opened her mouth to say something and then, for some reason, thought the better of it, and closed her mouth.

I braced myself for more of her argument. But, instead of continuing with her line of argument, her bewitching eyes had filled with anxiety … and love. They’d told me about what she wanted to say more than anything she’d said until that point.

“Harley, actually, I am crazy. Crazy about you,” I’d said quietly as she’d remained silent, and her eyes continued to communicate with mine. “I don’t know if you’ve ever felt a love like this before, but I have experienced something that comes really close to it, and I know the opposite of not feeling it, too. When you lose it, it’s devastating; it’s debilitating. It sucks the life out of you. And it makes you so crazy that you just want to …”

“End things?” she’d asked me softly, as I’d paused and had drawn a deep breath in and blew it out.

This turn in our conversation had prompted the memories of how I felt in that hospital room when Chris had drawn her last breath and left me; and of the fog I stumbled around in for months after, unable to make sense of what had happened, and what I would do without Chris — to float out of the memory vault where I’d kept all those devastating thoughts locked away in.

In the months after I’d survived my suicide attempt, whenever those memories of Chris’ last moments and the months I’d struggled through after she died, threatened to overcome me, I’d reach for the phone and call Dan. Or Jules. Or Diane – in that order. Then they’d talk me out of the immediate, overwhelming sense of danger and helplessness I’d felt – that was the pattern when these moments of paralyzing despair and pain crashed over me.