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hormones that we practically trailed them behind us like bread crumbs, but every day, when the final school bell sounded, we’d race to the banks of the river on the outskirts of our town. We’d spread out a blanket and ignore our homework while we drank each other in. No detail was too obscure or minor to revel in: He hated pickles, I couldn’t stand ketchup. “We’ll never be able to have a proper barbecue,” Michael moaned. “They’ll ban us from ever living in the suburbs.” We both secretly, humiliatingly, loved the game show Family Feud . I told Michael about how I tried to keep my lips tightly clenched for an entire year after some bitches in training on the third-grade playground told me my dimples looked like ugly holes in my face (“I’ll put itching powder in their bras,” Michael vowed, tracing my dimples with a gentle fingertip. “I’ll slip so much vitamin C into their Diet Cokes that they’ll turn orange. We’ll create an army of itchy-boobed Oompa Loompas, and force them to do our bidding.”)
    Our conversations were like Russian nesting dolls: With each layer of thoughts and fears and memories we uncovered, we only grew more eager to delve deeper, to tease apart the outer façades, until we finally uncovered each other’s hidden, secret parts. We stretched out those delicious afternoons as long as possible, folding up our blanket and shrugging into our backpacks only when mosquitoes began nibbling on us and I imagined my mother’s anxious face peering through the living room window.
    Though it took him a while to open up, I slowly came to understand how horrible it was for Michael at home. Before they moved out, his older brothers had teased him relentlessly, calling him a nerd and a geek, landing charley horses on his skinny biceps or sticking out a foot to trip him as Michael walked by, engrossed in a book. Worst of all, his dad didn’t try to stop the torment. Once when his oldest brother punched him in the stomach, Michael doubled over, then looked at his father for help and caught him smirking.
    “I think my dad’s jealous that I’m smarter than he is,” Michael said, his lighthearted tone contradicting the way his mouth twisted around the words. “And I look more like my … my, ah, mother. That’s part of it, too, I guess.”
    Eventually I told Michael about my father, too. He was the first person I ever talked to about it.
    Sometimes we just lay silently for hours, our legs, arms, and even fingers entwined, as though we couldn’t bear for a single part of us not to be touching. I honestly believe Michael and I saved each other that year, the final one we spent in our hometown.
    Now, when I mentally trace the trajectory of our relationship—and I’ve had plenty of time to do it, lots of silent evenings alone in our home—I realize there wasn’t a sharp breaking point or single furious argument that set us on our current path. And yet, a particular evening always comes back to me when I wonder how and why everything changed for us. It was the night I listened to an opera and fell in love for the second time in my life.
    I’d heard opera music before, of course, but I’d always flicked past it to a different radio station or talked over it at dinner parties. Go to an opera? I mean, if you were looking for that kind of a thrill, why not just volunteer to referee a shuffleboard tournament on a seniors’ cruise?
    Then I agreed to take on the D. C. Opera Company as a client on a pro bono basis. It was a win-win: My company could use the tax write-off, and the opera company desperately needed the infusion of cash that my fund-raisers would attract. As a thank-you, the company sent me two tickets to opening night of Madama Butterfly .
    “Do you want to go?” Michael asked as he looked in a hallway mirror to straighten his tie. He was heading out even earlier than usual that morning; he’d just bought a minority interest in the Blazes, and he was meeting with the D.C. mayor