Technically, on the spectrum of very bad things, they did nothing truly wicked. But of course, that spectrum has no measure for the greatest of all carnal sins, the kind that occurs before skin touches skin, before wondering turns to yearning, yearning to having, having to holding for dear life, when two people cling to each other so desperately that even when they lie, inches apart, neither is fully satisfied until the light between them turns to darkness.

Physical attraction did its part to glue them together, but something stronger than sexual attraction sealed the bond. When men and women grow apart, it is for the same reason they are drawn together; because they are finally, inherently too different. Friendships among women, on the other hand, were burdened by similarity.

There was something horribly depressing, she felt, about watching the weather report. That life could be planned like the perfect summer picnic drained it of spontaneity.

Occasionally, she wondered if all couples struggled so much to understand one another, spoke so little at dinner together, spent so much time camped out in front of the TV. Did all women sometimes feel distanced from their man while they were making love?

The map was just an accessory. She knew exactly where she was.

It was understood that they shared the same thresholds--the same inexhaustible appetite for wasting time, for discussing lofty ideas, for dissecting trivial things, for driving to nowhere in particular, for listening to music, for talking about books, for obsessing over pop culture, but mostly for laughing, talking, and simply being together. There was nothing one could say that the other would find too cruel or too kind. And on those rare occasions when they did tire of each other, they needed only go a day without talking before they yearned to reconnect.

And she had been in love enough times to rule out the possibility that this was merely some feat of nostalgia.

Time passed at an accelerated pace. They could be sitting in traffic or talking on the phone or waiting in line for a movie, and their time felt precious, important, worthwhile.

Was it possible there was some fatal flaw in their matching, that they were ultimately, impossibly different--dissimilar enough to fall in love, but too fundamentally distinct to stay together?