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sweatpants—a tangle of lace-like flesh that wraps clear around her hip. I glance from this up to her face and see that she’s looking at my own exposed stomach. I look back at her wound. I’m the asshole. I’m the guy who thinks he’s uniquely miserable, who thinks all the world’s woes are his, who sees the pure in everyone else and the dilapidated within. Only I have suffered. Only I know pain. How do you share what you think no one else can hold? Why do we all do this to ourselves and each other? Why can’t we just fucking cry like men?
    I do in that moment. Gone is the allure of having sex with this woman. Gone is the allure of loving her and spending the rest of my life with her. Gone are all the good things I dream about. All that’s left is the awful, the horrendous, the brutal, and the hurt.
    The last bit of egoism I have left in me is to think to myself—as I convulse with sobs and bawl like a child—that no one has ever cried like this. It’s the last time I’ll ever think I’m unique. The last time. Because as soon as I think that no one has ever cried like this, a woman is wrapping herself around me, a stranger, a sister, a fellow wounded, a lonely lover. And she shows me that I’m not alone. And we cry like the universe is about to end.
     
     
     

• 8 •
     
    There’s something oddly familiar about the way she strokes my hair after, the way she looks at me, the way her hair is mussed and her cheeks are flushed. She must be thinking the same thing, because the first thing either of us says in what feels like forever is her asking:
    “Was it good for you?”
    We both laugh. It’s the best kind of laughter. “What the hell was that?” I ask. Because nothing happened other than the holding and crying.
    “That’s called feeling something, soldier. Good to see you can still do it.”
    There’s something scarily clinical about the way she says this. She tucks my hair behind my ear. Definitely not reg length. And I can’t stop myself from thinking that maybe she was sent here to tune more than that other beacon. That’s paranoia, though. That’s remnants of my ego. A billion stars staring at me from across the unfathomable distance, and it’s not the cosmos that teaches me how small I am. It’s this perfect person lifting her shirt and reminding me that no one’s perfect. We all have stories. And regrets. And weaknesses. She pulled off what astronomy couldn’t. Or maybe it was just about damn time for me.
    “I don’t want you to leave,” I say.
    She nods. “I know.”
    Cricket growls in her sleep. The warthen passed out as soon as we were done bawling, like it had exhausted her as well. I reckon that, if she’s really an empath, it did.
    “Are you glad you met me?” Claire asks.
    “Of course.” There’s no hesitation.
    “There you go,” she says.
    I rub her arm. I memorize how she feels for later. I take her free hand and pull it to my lips, kiss the back of her hand, feel her squeeze my hand in assent, then take a deep sniff, trying to memorize how she smells.
    “Have you ever done this before?” I ask.
    Claire laughs. “Would it matter?”
    I shrug.
    A moment passes.
    “No,” she says. “I probably needed this more than you did.”
    The old me would’ve privately doubted. The new me isn’t so sure. Maybe her path has been harder than mine. Maybe I can let go of the specialness of my suffering. Maybe the handholds I’ve been clinging to have been digging into my palm and cutting me rather than keeping me from falling.
    “If you ever want to share,” I say. “I’m here.” Because I can be the shoulder too. I can listen instead of not-talking. I can prop someone else up. Me. The broken one. No: a broken one.
    I think of Tex, a grizzled vet who served in my last squad, who died the day I won my medal. I always thought Tex was crazy. He was the happiest motherfucker you ever met. And not happy with the zeal of killing, which a few of the really off-kilter vets got,