that I had long buried. I was happy to find that when I dug it up, that part was still there, waiting for me. But of course, no matter how perfect the days seemed, there was one ache looming over us night after night. Celia was not well. Her health was deteriorating. She did not have much time. “I know I shouldn’t,” Celia said to me one night as we lay together in the dark, neither of us yet sleeping. “But sometimes I get so mad at us for all the years we lost. For all the time we wasted.” I grabbed her hand. “I know,” I said. “Me too.” “If you love someone enough, you should be able to overcome anything,” she said. “And we have always loved each other so much, more than I ever thought I could be loved, more than I ever thought I could love. So why ... why couldn’t we overcome it?” “We did,” I said, turning toward her. “We’re here.” She shook her head. “But the years,” she said. “We’re stubborn,” I said. “And we weren’t exactly given the tools to succeed. We’re both used to being the one who calls the shots. We both have a tendency to think the world revolves around us.. .” “And we’ve had to hide that we’re gay,” she said. “Or, rather, I’m gay. You're bisexual.” I smiled in the dark and squeezed her hand. “The world hasn’t made that easy,” she said. “T think both of us wanted more than was realistic. I’m sure we could have made it work, the two of us, in a small town. You could have been a teacher. I could have been a nurse. We could have made it easier on ourselves that way.” I could feel Celia shaking her head next to me. “But that’s not who we are, that’s not who we have ever been or could ever be.” I nodded. “I think being yourself—your true, entire self—is always going to feel like you’re swimming upstream.” “Yeah,” she said. “But if the last few years with you have been any indication, I think it also feels like taking your bra off at the end of the day.”