We stand there for a moment, staring at each other, savoring it. And then all at once, we slam together. Mia's legs are off the ground, wrapped around my waist, her hands dipping in my hair, my hands tangled in hers. And our lips. There isn't enough skin, enough spit, enough time, for the lost years that our lips are trying to make up for as they find each other. We kiss. The electric current switches to high. The lights throughout all of Brooklyn must be surging.

She said it was because one day I was going to have to go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly and that scared me, so butterflies scared me.

Quitting’s not hard. Deciding to quit is hard. Once you make that mental leap, the rest is easy.”“Really? Was that how you quit me?” And just like that, without thinking, without saying it in my head first, without arguing with myself for days, it’s out there.“So,” she says, as if speaking to an audience under the bridge. “He finally says it.