This was the kind of guy who should be someone's first love. Someone who brought you flowers and refilled your water glass without your having to ask. Someone who watched you across the crowded rooms just to make sure you were okay. Someone who loved you quietly from a distance, without pressuring you or wanting you to change.

The way you act can sometimes be totally different from the way you actually are.

And I'm not sure if it's G-d, or fate, or just air masses colliding over water, but I will say this: It feels, finally, like flying.

We'd never talked about it, but I figured you knew the rules. If a cop stopped, you didn't run, you didn't talk back, you didn't ever, ever get angry. White people could do that—hell, they could shoot up a church and then ask for Burger King—but not us. We got killed at traffic stops for speeding, for having broken taillights, for knowing our rights.