Danielle had the dream again.

She was in her apartment, but everything seemed weirdly skewed—the colors were all wrong, tending to the browns and greens of decay, and everything seemed to be in slightly the wrong place. Everyone she saw, she thought she recognized—Nicole, her mom, Liz, Scott O'Connor, even people she hadn't seen in a while: Tom, Shelly Baumgarter, Emma Stanton—but everyone she saw looked slightly wrong—eyes too far apart, nose in the wrong place, skin the wrong color. As she walked, everything she saw seemed wrong.

She walked, it felt, for years. Never stopping, never still, never satisfied. She was looking for someone; she could not rest until she found him. She wasn't content without him, couldn't be still, couldn't be herself. She wasn't whole without him.

Until suddenly the moment came when she realized she was retracing her steps, that she had been here before, that she had been everywhere. That she couldn't find him. That he wasn't there to be found.

She felt the world drop out from under her, felt vertigo set in. Life was over; there was nothing she could do. She felt as though she was cast free of the earth, reeling through space. And yet she was still here; she knew this because people were walking past her, by her, around her, through her, with no sign that they could see her or that she actually existed. The babble of a million voices filled her ears, the scream of the wind; the raw sunlight seemed to burn on her skin. The knife was in her hands, and the flash of pain as it sliced across her arms was the sweetest thing she'd ever felt.

But even then, no blood came. Though she stared and panted and prayed, nothing happened. She had no blood. And with it came the realization that she was doomed to this existence forever, and that she would be trapped here, alone and unfinished, until time and dust were both ancient memories.

This was when she lurched upright in bed, screaming.

"Danielle!" said David. "Danielle!" He was calm—probably a sign that this had happened a couple times too many over the last few months—but she was in no shape to notice it. "Danielle, I'm here. Was it the dream again?"

Yes, it had been the dream again. But for the moment all she had time to do was dive into his arms and huddle there, shivering.

By the time she had calmed herself and wiped the tears from her eyes, David had fallen asleep again. She couldn't blame him; it was still dark outside, and both of them had work in a few hours. For herself, though, she could not sleep; the spectre of her nightmare still hung over her. Why should she keep having this dream?

It was May; she and David had been together for just over eight months. Once they got their differences worked out and started to realize—finally, finally—how to deal with each other, everything had fallen into place. David was her heart, her soul, her other half; she could ask for nothing more than what he gave her: his support, his love, his presence, his care.

In bed he was perfect; he had always been. He knew her body better than she herself did, or sometimes so it seemed; and she knew his wants and needs so well that he rarely had to say anything out loud. Everything about his body was perfect for her: his long frame, the warmth of his eyes, the lightness of his weight above her, even his cock—not too thick, not too short, but just right. She could not conceive of being happier.

They still had their fights; she sometimes had trouble remembering that his way of problem-solving was different than hers, and taking it all into account. But he would remind her, in that gentle way of his, that while he might be solving it differently than she did, that didn't mean he wasn't solving it, and she would subside into abashed silence. It made her feel better that, sometimes, she had to remind him of the same thing—not nearly as often, but every now and then. It made her feel less stupid that he wasn't perfect either.

And through it all was the sheer joy of having him back. Sometimes when he or she came home they would barely talk at all: just a few words here and there, and the conversations would be over, because they would have said everything they needed to. She could share a thought or an opinion with him and know that it would be understood; when he spoke, she knew that she was not misinterpreting him. So much of her life was simply easier and more sensible with him around.

They had begun to speak of the possibility of a future again. They talked—casually, most of the time, but now with increasing interest—about where they wanted to live, how many kids they wanted to have, what sort of jobs they would need. Some of his opinions had changed, and so had some of hers; many of them were the same, despite the intervening years. He was spending so much time at her place, or she at his, that they had decided to move in together. Maybe not immediately; "As our one-year anniversary present, maybe," David suggested. She was glad he was willing to be careful, to not just jump into something merely because he wanted it. She was sure they would still be together in September.

So why these dreams? Why this fear of losing him?

Though their lovemaking had resumed in earnest on Thanksgiving weekend, it wasn't until the new year that they began to spend nights together on a regular basis. Around the same time, the dreams began. She wondered what Katrina Stanton would say on the topic: coincidence? Or more? His presence in her life, his importance, had grown proportionally to the amount of time they spent together; now there was barely anything in her life that he didn't affect, one way or the other. It was just like it had been before... Right before they broke up.

If things went south and she and David had to break up again, could she survive? She couldn't say. Back when they first contemplated getting back together, it had been easy to say, 'Oh, I'm sure I'll be fine.' Now, today, it was harder to say. She had underestimated just how pervasive his presence would become, just how interwoven their lives would be. Perhaps it would have been wise to remember Ned Stanton's analysis, that the break-up had been more like a divorce than anything else. It certainly would be now.

But fear of something was meaningless if that thing would never happen. She didn't for a moment think that it was impossible for them to break up; but it sure did seem unlikely. She had no complaints about their relationship, or at least nothing that could not be resolved without too much trouble; and while David might be keeping all manner of things to himself, she thought she'd be able to tell, and she didn't think he was. What was to worry about?

Her wrists were itching again.

She looked down at them. The scars on the insides of her wrists had faded with time; they looked almost like the normal creases of bent skin. Hands were not something David ever paid any attention to. Good thing she hadn't tried to open her veins the right way—cut down the arm, which was where the veins actually were—or the scars would have been a fair bit less inconspicuous. Just thinking about it made her a little queasy—the idea of David's reaction upon finding them, and the idea of the pain and the blood.

Because she had no doubt that David would freak out. He simply wouldn't know how to deal with the fact that Danielle had gone so far astray, that she had been so tortured that she had sought release in death. He was so innocent; to him, those things were a realm that belonged only to unknown, unstated others, to people who were strangers to him. There was no way they could happen to anyone he actually knew. He was so young that way. Maybe, one day, when tragedy finally befell him, she could tell him the awful secret of her five missing months; maybe one day. Until then she would need to keep it secret.

And that was the painful part. Whether she liked it or not, that phase of her life was a part of her; it had informed every decision she had made since then. She was a different person because she had once been left broken, half of herself torn away, and succumbed to the hopelessness of the situation. She was a different person because she had succumbed and then risen up again. It was part of who she was. I am Danielle Mayer; David Glass is my other half—heck, it was still part of who she was! David wanted to tap into that, wanted her to be whole with him—which she wanted too, to be certain—but could he handle the costs that came with it?

...Did David feel the same way? Did he feel that she was his other half? He had moved on with startling alacrity, or so it seemed to her. She could only assume that he didn't, and that the burden would terrify him. ...Well, maybe it wouldn't; he seemed fully committed, and in a good way. But the thing was, she could never find out. She could never ask him. If she told him, and he freaked out... Well, that would be the end of her. For her own sake, she would have to keep this silent. The last thing she needed was to lose him again.

But could she? How well could she act? How well could she hide it from him? As well hide from him that she had breasts, or eyes, or that she was a bitch; these things weren't going to go away. But how long could she hold him off before he started noticing, and asking questions? Would he mature quickly enough that she could finally confess to him the whole truth? Or would she lose him? It was bad enough having to cross her fingers and wait; the anxiety was killing her already. No wonder I'm having stressful dreams!

She didn't know what to do. She just didn't know what to do.

She couldn't ask Nicole, of course; even Nicole didn't know about her breakdown, and Danielle was not about to tell her. She couldn't even tell her soul-mate, for heaven's sake!—and besides, Nicole was even more sheltered. It would take her months to get used to the idea—if she ever could at all.

She didn't have the money, but she called the Stantons anyway. This was worth spending on. But Katrina failed her for the first time in living memory. "I know it isn't the best of advice, Danielle, but I think you're just going to have to tell him. I'm sure you can come up with some ways to soften the impact, or to build him up to it... But what I'm hearing is that it's important to you that you be able to share this part of yourself with him. And that's wholly up to you, Danielle. Whether you do, and when you do, is something only you can decide."

Danielle couldn't help but feel irritated with Katrina for a little while. How much more useless advice could she get? I want to share this with him. Well, duh! Ned had warned her at the beginning that sometimes a therapist's job simply came down to repeating what the client was saying, but most of the time that was actually a useful exercise: he or Katrina would be able to phrase it in a new way, or connect it to something else that had been said, and shed new light on the subject. But this time... 'Find a way to soften the impact,' indeed. Now if only she knew how!

But perhaps she should take heart and stop focusing on the negative. Yes, she had a tough conversation in her future, but there were good things to celebrate as well. She had never met a problem she couldn't handle—after all, she was still here, wasn't she? She could conquer this too.

But it was still a long time before she could fall asleep again. And when she woke up she clung to David for a long time. Both of them were almost late for work that day.

They had settled into a daily routine by now. They all had jobs, of course, because there was rent to pay, and bills, and student loans to pay off. But they had friends too, and family. Sometimes they would meet Danielle's family for a meal or some activity, or David's family; more often than not, David would simply come over to Danielle's place, and sometimes Liz or Carmen or Heidi as well, to spend some time with Danielle and Nicole.

Nicole was beginning to make some new friends, which delighted Danielle more than she could say. Her coworkers at the music school were supportive and friendly, and Nicole had been invited to a few functions with them and even gone to one of them. She described them as an eclectic mix: some were her parents' age, some her grandparents' age, and others younger still in college or even high school. They came from all walks of life, but Nicole said she felt at home there: all of them were passionate about music. "It's different when you're working with amateurs," she said. "You have to be so... Delicate. You can't always tell it like it is, because sometimes they don't want to hear the truth. They just want to hear that they're good, even if that's not true. ...Which doesn't mean I can be rude or anything, it just means... I don't have to lie. It's refreshing."

She had found a church to go to, after trying out several in the area. She had been raised Catholic and gone to Masses during her college years, but with decreasing frequency as she grew older. "It's not that I stopped believing in God or anything, it was that... Well, what I was hearing from the pastors, from the other attendees... I didn't agree with it. I think maybe there was a, I dunno—I mean, it was a college campus, it's pretty liberal, right? So the preachers felt like they had to swing extra-conservative. And... I just didn't agree with what I was hearing." She had settled into a much more liberal church here; Danielle was surprised to hear that it was Catholic as well.

Nicole wasn't. "I used to hear my parents—and a lot of other people—condemn the cafeteria Christians," she said. At Danielle's confused look, she explained, "You know, the ones who pick and choose which parts of the religion they believe in? Cafeteria Christians. There was always this feeling that those people were lazy or not devoted enough. But now... Well, I mean. What do you do when there are certain things you just don't believe?—because you've seen them played out, and you know that what the priests say about it just isn't true? I can't make myself believe something. Now I understand those cafeteria Christians a lot more... And I'm glad I've found a church that doesn't turn people away."

"I thought the whole point of Jesus was that you don't turn people away," Danielle said.

"It is," said Nicole. She gave a wan smile: "But some people don't pick and choose that part at the cafeteria."

What Danielle really wanted to know was whether Nicole was meeting men. Danielle had David to occupy her time, but she knew that, if she didn't, she'd be hard-pressed to make any new friends. Being out of college had done a number on her social life. Having said that, there wasn't really anywhere she went; Nicole at least had church. Was she meeting anyone? Danielle would hate to see her while away without anyone to love, or to love her. Everyone needed somebody.

When she broached the subject with David, he was not as supportive as she'd expected. "Nellie, sometimes it's nice to be single, you know? You aren't beholden to anybody, you can do whatever you want. There isn't someone telling you what they think you should do—well, that's not true, there's always someone telling you that. But you feel less guilty about ignoring them when you're not dating them. Sure, there are downsides, but it's not all bad being single."

"It's not that," said Danielle. "I'm thinking long-term here. Don't you want to see her get married and have children one day? Don't you want to see her happy?"

"Well, yes, Nellie, but that is long-term thinking. We're not even twenty-five yet, none of us. We have years. You and I—we have years. We don't think that way, because of the lives we've led, but most people don't settle down until 25. Or maybe even 30. Do you have any idea how unusual we are?—finding someone we want to marry, at our age? That's how the fairy tales work, but most real life is different."

What happened was that Liz stepped in. In retrospect, Danielle didn't know why it didn't occur to her earlier. Liz had a biting, sarcastic streak, but that would make her perfect for looking out for Nicole. Besides, Liz was smart enough to know when to tone it down. And maybe Nicole would help soften her. The Liz who had needed to see Katrina Stanton was not that deep under the surface; she was cynical, and she was hopeless. Nicole's gentle cheer would help alleviate that. But the long and the short of it was that Liz needed a wingman, and Nicole needed to get out more. It couldn't have been more perfect.

(Aside, of course, from the difficult task of convincing Nicole to agree with it in the first place. She didn't know Liz all that well, and—being who she was—wasn't particularly confident about going out with someone she didn't know. It took a fair bit of chaperoning, all four of them out on the town, before Nicole felt enough trust in Liz to befriend her. But it happened. Eventually.)

In the meanwhile, Danielle decided to resume her sessions with the Stantons. That was tricky: David didn't know she was seeing, or had ever seen, a therapist, and Danielle was perfectly happy to keep it that way. But she had only so many spare hours in the day, and they liked to spend them together. Naturally, he wanted to know where this new two-hour-a-week appointment had come from. Coming up with the excuse was harder than finding a weekly time slot. She was lucky enough in that regard: just about the only slot the Stantons had was on Friday right after she got out of work. So she called it a staff meeting.

It only somewhat worked, and it was David's suspicions that brought things to a head.

It had only been a few weeks since she'd renewed her weekly appointment. Nicole was in her room, and David and Danielle in her's; they had gone out to a nice dinner, and then returned to her bed to watch a movie. Sometimes they actually made it through the movie, depending on what it was, but at others their attention would wander. Tonight was one of those nights. Now the movie itself (Finding Nemo) was coming to a close, and they were watching it—but they hadn't watched most of it. David lay on his back, his arm around her, and she sprawled next to him, her head on his chest, listening to the deep whoosh of his breath, her pussy still full to the brim with his warm quivering seed.

It was as good a time as any to share some of the things Ned Stanton had suggested that afternoon, and so she did. "I've been thinking."

"Oh?" he said. "While we were doing it?"

She gave a snort. "No. It occurred to me that part of the problem is that you feel like getting a career is a really big barrier. Maybe even insurmountable."

"Oh?" he said. "What makes you think that?"

"Just..." Ned said it, and I think he was right. "Just... Signs."

"Uh-huh," he said, smiling but skeptical.

"What I thought," she said, plowing on, "was that... It might be easier if... If we sat down together and broke the problem down into smaller goals. That way you'd feel more confident about it—and you'd feel more of an overall sense of achievement. I know it looks monumental, but I'm sure we can make it into more of a... More of a manageable thing."

David turned on his side to face her. "And where did you get this idea?" he said. "Your staff meeting? Was it that boring?"

Danielle said nothing.

"Nellie, you think I'm stupid?" He kissed her nose. "This week it's about how I can get over my fears. Last week you talked about how you need to learn to give me space, complete with reminders on how to do that. The week before it was about learning to compromise and seek each other's goals and not fight each other—basically the same thing you said at Thanksgiving, but with a lot more detail. Now, I respect that there are some things you'd prefer to keep to yourself," he said, smiling, heading off her protest before it could begin. "But just so you know, you're not fooling anybody. And, just so you know, you don't have to fool anybody. I love you. Whatever it is you want to say, I will listen."

Danielle looked at him for a long time in silence. The door was open.

"I'm seeing a therapist," she said finally.

He blinked at her. "Okay. And...?"

"And... And what?" She sat up, astonished. "Davey, don't you know what that means?"

He blinked. "Well, I thought I did, but perhaps I didn't get it right. What does it mean?"

"It means..." She struggled to articulate the thought. "It means I need help. It means there's problems in my life that I can't handle alone. Big problems. Things that I need professional help for. It means I'm damaged."

"Whoa, okay, hold on," said David. He sat up, his hand touching her face. "Nellie, talk to me here. What's going on? Are you addicted to drugs?"

"No," she said, affronted.

"Are you an alcoholic?"

"No."

"Do you need to take pills or something? Are you schizophrenic? Are you hallucinating that aliens are trying to control your brain?"

"No," she said. "David, what kind of a loser do you think I am?"

"Well, you're the one who said you were damaged," he said, his brow furrowed in concern. "I'm just trying to figure out what you meant by that. I mean, it must be something big, or you wouldn't be worried about me finding out."

"...Maybe we have different definitions of 'big'," she said. "David, I'm not like psycho or something. It's just... I didn't..." She sighed. "I swore I would never tell you this. I swore that part of myself was behind me."

"Danielle, I love you," he said again. "That includes the parts of you you don't like." He gave a little smile. "Hell, that includes the parts of you I don't like. It means not caring about those things. It means knowing that other things are more important. It means loving you even though you're not perfect."

She remembered what Sonya had said. "Love isn't what you buy. It's what you buy with."

He smiled. "That's a wise analysis. Did your therapist say that?"

She gave a hapless snort. "No, my sister."

"I've always thought Sonya was smarter than she let on. But Nellie, that's neither here nor there. If... If you want to keep this secret, you can. But you should know that I love you. No matter what."

"Even if I'm schizophrenic and I start peeing all over the bed," she said.

He laughed. "Wow. Are those things related?"

"I don't know," she said. "I'm not schizophrenic. And I don't pee beds anymore."

"Oh good," he said with a sardonic laugh.

She took a moment to compose herself.

"David," she said. "Didn't you ever wonder what happened during those five months when I was gone?"

"Five months?" he said. "I only counted two. You stopped coming to school after about Thanksgiving."

"And you never wondered?" she said.

"Well," he said. He ran his hand through his hair—the gesture that meant he was uncomfortable. "I... I suppose I should have. But, Nellie, I... I mean, we had just broken up, you know? I was dating Angela Wentworth, and, and trying to love her, and focus on her, and pretend that I was happy with her even though we didn't know each other all that well, and she wasn't as willing to compromise (which was weird because simultaneously she was extremely pleasant company), and that she wasn't... She wasn't... She wasn't you.

"So there I was, and then you disappeared. Yes, I wondered. But I couldn't afford to care. It would've hurt too much."

She nodded. "I understand. I... That was why I disappeared, really."

He tilted his head. "Oh?"

"The, just the..." She tossed her hands. "How do I explain it! It was like I didn't know how to live anymore. There wasn't... There wasn't anything in my life that you weren't involved in somehow." She grimaced. "Kind of like now. There's... I mean, fuck, we even do dishes together. It's even worse now. And it was hard enough the first time."

"Why, are we going to break up a second time?" he said.

She gulped. "I hope not. Because the first time we did, I just broke down. It... I mean, I just... Disengaged. I stopped doing homework, I stopped paying attention, I stopped... I stopped caring about... Everything. It was like I—what, I didn't know how to function. At all."

David said nothing.

"And that's why it was five months for me, because I was just... Gone. I barely remember anything from that time—not like memory loss, but just... You know how it's like, when you know that things happened to you, but they weren't important enough to remember? That's the whole five months. But it must've gotten bad at some point, because..." She took a deep breath—and then held out her hands to him, wrists up.

David accepted them wordlessly.

"In retrospect, maybe it was for the best," she said, "because it... It kicked me out of my fugue. I woke up in the hospital and started to be ready to live my life again, and God only knows how long it might've taken for me to get there otherwise. But that was how I got into therapy. And that... That was what happened."

David pressed her forearm against his face, his eyes closed. After a moment, she felt wetness, and realized he was crying.

"No, it wasn't your fault," she said. "Davey, it... There was no way we could have guessed that this was going to happen. I..." She looked around, helpless to comfort him. "I'm sure similar things happened to you."

"They did," he whispered. "Haven't you ever wondered where I went right before the end of senior year?"

Now it was her turn to feel uncomfortable. "Well, I... I mean, I noticed, yes. But... At the time, there was... I had Weston to deal with. And I was trying to be happy with him, and deal with him, and deal with the fact that I'm not Jodie. And that he wasn't... Wasn't... Wasn't you. And having to decide whether I was gonna do it with him, when just the thought of doing it with him was already skeeving me out... I had... Other things on my mind."

He nodded. "I understand. I... It was what hurt. Seeing you trying to be... Trying to be good with him, and knowing that that part of my life was over, that... All the things we had shared, once, were going to go to him now. Thinking of him..." He grimaced. "Thinking of him doing it with you skeeved me out too. Hell, me doing with Angela was... There was always something wrong with it."

"With the sex?"

"No, not just with the sex. ...I mean, yeah, she was just, you know, lying there and taking it, which was kind of a turn-off. Actually it was kind of creepy. All of it was creepy. It was like doing a corpse."

Danielle shuddered.

"And then here you were, and what we had shared was so different, and... Now you were going to share it with Weston." He grimaced. "And I... I ran away."

She stared.

"That afternoon, when school was over, I just... I got in my car, and... I'm not even sure where I went. I don't remember. I got hopelessly lost and had to print out directions at a public library. But that was Tuesday morning. By Monday night I had gotten myself hopelessly lost, and I was just... I was standing on an overpass, looking down, and thinking. Thinking, Maybe it'd be easier if..."

Blindly, tears overwhelming her, she reached out and pulled him to her. She wasn't sure if she was giving comfort or seeking it. His skin was warm against hers; his voice rumbled against her chest.

"But... I couldn't," he mumbled. "I was a coward. I was too afraid to face death."

She clung to him. The thought of losing him, of his not being here...

"And I knew that... That if I couldn't choose death, then I was choosing life. And... I had to face that. So I did. I found out how to get home, and... I went home." He gave a humorless laugh. "Mom almost grounded me to death. It took a lot of explaining before she would let me go to prom and not, you know, waste all the money I'd spent on tuxedos and limos and stuff. I almost didn't want to go in the first place, but that was a lot of money."

"It was," she said. "It was crazy."

"So, no, Danielle, I'm not going to judge you if you like to talk to a therapist," he said. "There are problems that are too big to carry alone. Most of the time, that's what you've got me for. But I know there are some I can't help you with. You know, like, the ones where I am the problem."

She gave a helpless laugh.

"So..." He pushed back to look her in the eye. "So don't feel bad. I love you. And whatever you need to do... I'm with you, all the way."

"Good," she whispered. "Because what I need is you. David, I can't live without you. We made mistakes, we tried it, it didn't work. I can't live without you."

He kissed her. "Then you won't."

"But what about... David, what about everything that pushed us apart? The arguments we had... That we still have. I'm worried. They don't come up much, but these things are... I mean, they aren't avoidable."

He gave her a wry smile. "Well, what do you think your therapist is for? Danielle, just because we love each other doesn't mean we can't change."

"But just because we love each other doesn't mean we will change, Davey," she sobbed. "It scares me. I can't live without you, but I never know if you're going to be someone I can live with either."

"I know, I know," he said, sighing, "I... Well, it's like you said. It is hard for me to, to contemplate the big things. And besides... Nellie, how is that different from anything? How is that different from anybody who gets married? People change, and not always for the better. If we're planning to spend our lives together... Well, how do you know I'm going to be someone you like in five or ten years? For that matter, how do I know you're going to be someone I like at that time? We don't. We just have to... Cross our fingers, and hope that the other person will listen."

"Will you? David, they're going to lay you off in a month. That can't be a, a normal state of affairs."

"I know." He smiled. "So, what if we don't move in together unless I get a job?"

She grimaced. "Sounds more like punishing me for your mess-ups."

"Oh, come on, angel, you don't think I want to live with you? You don't think I don't want to marry you?" He smiled. "Look, the point is... Yes, I need to work on listening to you when you say you're worried. But you also need to have a little faith—in me, and in yourself." He kissed her nose. "You need to believe that love is enough."

"It wasn't last time," she whispered.

"No," he said. "It wasn't. But we're smarter now, and we've learned more. History does not have to repeat itself."

"But what if it does?" she said. "I'm scared."

He drew her close. "So am I," he murmured, his head over her shoulder. "But that's one more thing we have in common now than we did an hour ago."

"That's... More comforting than it ought to be," she said.

"And besides... Sweetie, we both want it to work. We're both scared. We both know what the stakes are. 'cuz... Danielle, I can't live without you either. Whatever we need to do... I'm with you. I'm gonna do it."

It was what she had needed to hear. She hadn't even known she needed to hear it, but now that he had said it she felt tension ebbing away. It was good to know that she wasn't alone in this thing, that he wouldn't just jump ship if it got inconvenient. That he couldn't, any more than she could.

"But you have to be patient with me," he said. "You know that... Changing myself... You know that that can be hard for me."

She nodded. "I know. I know. I just... I needed to know that you'd try."

"For you," he said. "Anything."

"Not for me," she said. "For us."

"For us," he agreed.

In later years, she would come to look on that conversation as the beginning of the end. Or perhaps it was the end of the beginning. Either way, it was a point of transition, one of those gateways which marked a different way of life. Suddenly the fears she had were gone. Suddenly David was her ally, her friend, as reliable as oxygen; she could turn to him at any time, in any way, and know he would be there. It was like it had been at the beginning, but this time without the doubt and fear.

David began to come with her to therapy sessions. The Stantons were couples counselors, after all, and they were pleased to bring David into their weekly sessions. Of course, they didn't go for long; David turned out to be an intuitive at the coping strategies the Stantons advocated, and he was much better at remembering to use them than she was. Before long, neither of them felt like they needed the help—and, as much as Danielle loved the Stantons, every visit cost money. By August their sessions had stopped.

David, Danielle began to understand, was the kind of person who just needed peace and quiet to work through his own problems. Her inclination was to rush in and talk things out; David, deeply intuitive, was not as beholden to logic. All he needed was space and time to let the problem percolate; eventually the answer would pop out. For her to badger him and demand to know his thought processes was irritating to both of them: there was no thought process for him to report, not really. His best decision-making went on far below the level of conscious thought. So he'd have to make something up, and she'd call bullshit on it, and they'd just fight. She began to listen when he said, "I haven't decided yet," and began to believe him when he continued, "but I will eventually." And to trust him when he said, "This is what's right for me," even if she wasn't sure how he'd concluded that. Eventually she realized that he wasn't always sure either.

David became more sympathetic when Danielle tried to talk out her problems. He had often been skeptical of such conversations, suspecting that Danielle would try to steer things towards his own unresolved issues—which, to be fair, she often had. But she explained to him that these conversations were not a front (or at least not just a front); she needed to hear her own thoughts to know what they were, and sometimes another person to repeat them before she even heard them. Even more than that, she did not always trust her own judgment: she liked having David there to poke holes in her arguments—or, more frequently, defend her from her own skepticism, pointing out why already-discarded courses of action might actually be viable.

It was, of course, the opposite of what David did—it was remarkable, but he could be in her life almost twenty-four hours a day and still manage to keep things to himself. It was just who he was. But as David began more comfortable with her way of thinking, he began to approach her for advice, bringing out his conclusions and asking for her perspective. And Danielle, benefiting both from David's urging and her own experiences, began to trust herself more, to be more willing to say, "No, I've come to this conclusion and I'm going to stick with it." Sometimes she just knew—without knowing how she knew—that one decision or another was right, and instead of questioning that knowledge, she trusted it. It was, she realized, the same thing David did. And, she realized, generally, when they had that knowledge to fall back on, both of them were right.

Under the Stantons' guidance, and then later on their own, they began to set goals for themselves, particularly on the life they wanted to share. The Stantons embraced David's suggestion of setting up things as a reward, though with some reservations: "Be careful that it doesn't turn into a power thing," they said. "The point is for you two to work together on accomplishing something, not for one or the other of you to be right and get to gloat about it."

The goals often came in multiple levels. David would set something overall; he was much better about analyzing where they were, and whether any given objective was within reach. Then Danielle would break that objective down into smaller steps, for while David was great at big-picture, he wasn't so good with details. That was Danielle's job. Before too long they'd have a plan of action that looked both achievable and impressive, which benefited them both. David admitted that he often wanted things on a daunting scale, which sapped even more of his already-low willpower; and Danielle, who was so used to just snapping her fingers and getting things done, sometimes felt as if it were pointless. Now they both had goals which were small enough to chew but large enough to be exciting.

One of them was the practicalities of life. David was a man of comfort, by and large; once he found a place where he was happy, he didn't care to stir himself and (though it shamed him to admit it) sometimes went out of his way to stay in that place, even if that meant passing up on other opportunities. Danielle felt no particular need to fix what wasn't broken; but she also knew that that which wasn't broken might not stay that way. "At the very least," she told him, "we need to think about children. We need to be prepared just in case."

"Why," he said, "are we going to have any?"

"At the rate we're having sex? Probably," she said. "It's almost inevitable. Even if we aren't trying, accidents happen. So I think we need to be prepared."

David grimaced. "See, this is one of those daunting goals we were talking about. Do you know how much money it takes to raise a child?"

"I know," she said, hugging him, "it's kind of frightening to me too. But, David... If we do have a baby, I wanna do as well by him as I can. Or her. Wouldn't it be a shame to not be able to give our children the best? To have to let them down, because... What? Because we were too lazy?"

"We could just get our tubes tied," he said.

She gave him a wry smile. "I don't know what we'll decide. But my point is, I want to keep our options open. Whatever might come along... Let's not close any doors."

He gave her a look. "You know that involves work on your part too," he said. "It's not just me who has to have a better job, it's you too."

Suddenly she understood some of the 'daunting' he had referred to. "I know," she said. "I know. It isn't... I know sometimes it's, like, always focused on you. That's just... You know. That's the way I am."

He gave her a kiss on the cheek. "That's the girl I love."

They set themselves goals for income and savings over the next five years. David was quick to demand that these goals be revisable in future, that they not be set in stone, and seemed surprised when Danielle agreed without hesitation. "Come on, Davey, I may be determined but I'm not crazy. I know that things can change under us at any moment. These are our goals for today, now, when you and I are in this particular place, with these particular monthly expenses and these particular jobs. If any of those change, then these goals aren't applicable anymore. They'd have to be revised. And of course we'll revise them."

In the meanwhile, of course, David had found himself a new job, though through an unexpected means: one of the partners at his architectural firm had decided to spall off and found a new company. David was one of the first people he tried to recruit. "It's going to be a small firm," David explained, "he wants to go into housing. No more shopping malls or airport terminals; now it's just individual homes." David's great asset to the new firm was his ability to deal with the government bureaucracy. Every building needed to pass city inspections and comply with city codes, something most architects didn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. David, with his enormous patience and quiet demeanor, was better at smiling his way through the city planning department than any firebreathing anger-driven architect who wasn't even sure if he was talking to the right manager. Of course, it drove David mad, hunting down obscure rules and regulations, but even he had to admit that he was being overpaid for his services: "Evidently Gene" (the owner of the company) "really appreciates not having to deal with that stuff." Besides, it wasn't all he did; he was increasingly being brought into architectural matters, personnel management and the business's financial matters. David didn't feel like he was contributing much there, but his bosses assured him he was on his way to being useful.

Danielle had widened her freelance work by a simple expedient: she had mentioned to a teacher at the district that she had once been into photography, and said teacher had offered to hire Danielle as a secondary wedding photographer on the spot. Danielle had warned her (her name was Ramona Danziger) that she had very little formal training as a photographer, and even less practical experience, but Ramona had been insistent—especially after seeing an ad-hoc portfolio of her earlier work. Danielle had to run around for three hours while trying to be invisible, but she and David got to attend the wedding, which was fun and had delicious food to boot, and Ramona Danziger (now Ramona Luchen) was satisfied with a lot more of the prints than Danielle had expected. And once the school year resumed and the new Mrs. Luchen began flashing those pictures around, many at the district started trying to hire her as well. There was even talk of outsourcing the yearbook portraits to her. (That, Danielle turned down in a flash. Photographing every single grade-schooler in the district did not sound like fun to her.) In the meanwhile, she had gotten work as a faculty member at the local community college, passing on her PhotoShop expertise.

All of this went on in between moving apartments. David had met the goals they'd set—so, for that matter, had Danielle met his counter-goals—and both of them were happy to reap the reward of moving in together. The two of them found a nice one-bedroom at a location that was more central to their various places of employment; Liz was moving into Danielle's old room with Nicole. Danielle, who had now moved twice in a year, made David promise that they would stay in this new one for at least a few years, though David countered this with a laugh: "Your specialty is three-dimensional computer graphics, Danielle. That's Pixar, that's ILM, that's mostly out in California. You're being wasted at your current jobs. If we move anywhere, it'll be for you." This of course was an oversimplification—there were smaller CGI houses, like Zoic Studios—but none of them were nearby. Besides, the truth was that Danielle liked working in photography. Her computer-graphics degree had involved a lot of generating content from scratch, which she wasn't as good with; her hand was best at taking an existing photo and bringing out its beauty.

The one thing she had never anticipated having problems with was their sex life, so she was astonished one evening to find herself laying beneath him, staring at the ceiling, wondering, Is this all there is? It took her even longer to figure out just what was wrong. David knew her body as intimately as he always had; he could bring her to orgasm more quickly, and more strongly, than she could ever be able to. No, she could not claim dissatisfaction on that score. What irked her, she realized, was how... vanilla it was.

Their lovemaking habits didn't help the situation; David (she noticed) was not the type to seek out sex, preferring to just let it naturally evolve out of whatever they were doing at the time. The idea of coming home from work and wanting to jump her bones was alien to him—or, at least, the idea of acting out that want. It was startling to realize how reserved he was. They had known each other's bodies since before they understood what they were knowing; what was to be ashamed of? And yet he was. Either he had no rough-sex inclinations (doubtful), or he felt hesitant to express them.

Getting him over these inhibitions was harder than she expected. When she brought it up, he looked flabbergasted. "You mean you... You want..."

"You know, something more kinky. Hold me down. Turn me over, do it to me from behind. Get into it. I love you, Davey, and I love the way we make love, but sometimes a girl just wants to get fucked. I mean. You know?"

"Not... Not really," said David.

Danielle gave him a skeptical look. "Who have you been dating?"

"Nicole," he said, "who could barely maintain arousal for blushing for about the first six months. And before that, Angela Wentworth and Missy Renquist, who wanted me to just get it over and done with. And, both before and after all that, you, who—our first time around, at least—would never have suggested such a thing. Of course, we weren't actually doing it at the time, so..."

"Okay, okay," she said, "I get the idea. Well, Davey, in case you haven't noticed, we've changed since then. I've learned more about what I want from a lover. So have you. And this is something I want."

"Is... Do you not... Like what we do? Is it..."

"Oh, Davey, no, no," she said, seeing immediately that he felt like he'd made a mistake somewhere. "Davey, when we make love, it... It's like being one soul with you. One body. No more you, no more me, just us, and no barriers anymore." She could not even begin to explain what it was like: lying beneath him, her legs wrapped around him, her body sliding up and down with each thrust, her breasts rubbing against his chest, gasping into his mouth, their eyes locked—sharing breath and soul and gaze, knowing that there was nothing of her that was not going back to him, knowing that the two halves of their being had joined in a perfect circle. Making love with him was not so much sexual as it was spiritual.

And that, in itself, was the problem. "I love it, but sometimes I just wanna cum, you know? Sometimes I just wanna enjoy your body, and mine, and what your body does to mine. And what mine does to yours too, for that matter. You know? I love that when we make love, it's such a... It's like a sacrament. But it doesn't have to be that all the time. You know?"

"Err... Kind of," said David, his eyebrows skeptical.

She laughed. "You aren't seeing it."

"Well, the... Dani, we get to have the intense physical sensations too, you know? We've always known how to do that. From a physical standpoint, sex with you is more satisfying and more powerful than with anyone else I've ever had it with. But it's harder to make love well than it is to be a good lover. What we share, when we're one being... That's more valuable than being able to fuck well."

"True, but they aren't mutually exclusive either," she said, grinning. "We can still make love even if we learn to fuck too."

And from then on they began to learn. For Danielle, it was a very different experience; David was like breathing to her, but now she was learning not to take him for granted. And for David... She was starting to realize that beneath that layer of competence and insight and patience was a man of startlingly diminished confidence. He didn't believe in himself, not the way Danielle believed in herself. Or, for that matter, in the way she believed in him. Soft, loving sex was his way of hiding the fact that he didn't think he could pull off hard, powerful sex.

And yet it was easy to bring him along. She started by showing him the different things she could do to him. Riding him for the first time was an epiphany for him; it showed on his face just how turned on he was to see her rocking up and down above him, her breasts free, her hands on his chest. When she turned around and rode him backwards, he came like a fire hose! And from there it wasn't too hard to coax him up to his knees behind her. When she looked over her shoulder at him—seeing the curve of her own butt, his torso above it, his confused face above that—it was clear that he wasn't sure what to do, how to move, where to put his hands. But his body knew, and pretty soon he was fucking her as if he'd been born to it. Her breasts swung free below her, tingling; her whole body rocked with the shock of each thrust, her organs feeling like they were moving inside her; the smacks of his flesh against hers filled the room. She came, it seemed, harder than she ever had in her life.

But while some of it was easy, other aspects were more difficult. He loved the spectacle, surely; she knew from past experience (mostly with Tom) that riding him backwards or in doggie style would give him a brilliant view of her body, of her ass, and even (depending on the angle) of his cock entering her, clasped by her nether lips, and that this would turn him on like crazy. Men were visual creatures. But none of this was really new territory; it was just sex. Yes, she was accentuating different features of it, but, really, it was still just sex. Besides, he wasn't ever taking the lead in this stuff. She might encourage it from him, and of course he didn't mind complying, but it wasn't something he wanted.

So one Friday afternoon, when they had decided to go out that evening, she made sure to get home before he did. She put on the perfume he liked, and the dress he said made her cleavage look perfect. All through the evening she did coquettish things, the flirty things television said she should do—sucking on utensils, acting gigglish and a little drunk, leaning against him so that he could look down her dress (God only knew that she had precious little to look down, but he claimed this dress framed it perfectly, and he should know. She certainly couldn't look down her own dress). It drove her nearly mad to act that way.

David, of course, was a complete gentleman. He smiled and nodded in a slightly embarrassed way, as though he thought her behavior were absurd. It daunted her, but she didn't give up. Still, she wasn't sure who was going to win; dinner was over, and they were driving home, and he showed no sign of being perturbed—or, for that matter, aroused. Maybe he was one of those truly bizarre men who couldn't be made to think of sex by putting pouty lips around a straw. But when he shut the door of their apartment behind them and turned to her with fire in his eyes, she knew she'd won.

And yet, the fire was more than she'd anticipated. Before she knew what was happening, he had her against the wall, her arms pinned by his hand, his face inches from hers, the warmth and hardness of his cock evident despite several layers of clothing. "You little minx," he breathed. "It was all I could do not to turn you over the table and just fuck you right there."

She grinned. "Silly. What made you think I didn't want you to?"

"Well, right now, I've got you, Danielle Meyer," he growled. "And now we're going to find out just how much you want it."

By the end of the night, they knew: evidently, she wanted it several times. First he commanded her to kneel before him and suck him off; he exploded almost immediately, a testament to how well it she had done her job. Then he undressed her, bade her face the wall, and ate her out until her climax shuddered through her; instead of taking mercy, he kept sucking and licking as she came, making her knees shake to the point that she thought she might collapse. Then he rose to his feet and without prelude took her from behind, practically before her previous orgasm had subsided. She had time for a smaller one before he exploded inside her, painting her walls with his silver cum. Lest she think he was done, he dragged her to the bed and set her to work at his cock again, still sweet with his juices and her own. But once he was erect, he pulled himself free of her and crawled below to return the favor. She came twice, shrieking, before he saw fit to penetrate once again; he seized her legs and brought them up against his chest, pulling her to the edge of the bed until her ass nearly hung off it. When he finally came, it was deep inside her, but she could barely feel it; her pussy felt numb. Then he collapsed beside her and, with barely a good-night, fell asleep.

The next morning he was shy and embarrassed, and Danielle allowed that he might have gone a tad overboard, seeing as how she was a little sore. But she refused to agree that he was wrong to have taken control at all. "Davey, I trust you. I'm not scared that you'd hurt me, I know you'd never do that. What I am is happy: happy that you trust me enough to let go like that. It's not easy to do."

David wouldn't meet her gaze. "I just... I'm scared that if I just... If I just care about my own pleasure, it wouldn't be fun for you. You wouldn't enjoy it."

"Hon, did you notice how many times I came? she said. "Me being sore isn't from you being in there too long." Actually, that wasn't true—quite the opposite, in fact—but he needed to be encouraged. She would teach him to have control later; it was a far bigger deal (in her opinion) that he had finally learned to not have it. "And besides, it's fun, isn't it?—to just go for it. You don't have to be responsible for the sex all the time, David. You can relax and let it take care of itself. Hell, you can relax and not even worry about it at all. It's not a big deal if I don't cum all the time."

"Yeah, but I do," he said.

"And that matters?" she said. "Hon, it doesn't have to be perfect equality. We make sacrifices for each other all the time. Love isn't what you buy, after all. It's what you buy with."

He thought about that.

"Well... Not every time we have sex," he said finally.

"God no! I'd die from orgasm! I'd die happy, obviously, but..."

He smiled for the first time that day. "But maybe sometimes. Every now and then."

She kissed him. "Whenever you want."

And so the days passed. There was always something to worry about, because most of these things happened over a long period of time, and often concurrently; there was stress, and fatigue, and sometimes arguments born out of irritation. But Danielle was never particularly aware of being angry or upset. By and large, she wasn't. By and large, things went well. The days passed, and the holidays, and their birthdays; the seasons turned on their endless wheel; David's twenty-fourth birthday came and went; and soon it was April, April of another year, with flowers blooming and sunlight slicing through the budding leaves of the black-barked trees.

One evening—a Tuesday—David came home with a bemused expression on his face. "It was the oddest thing," he explained. "I was talking to Ron, just, you know, chatting. And he asked me what we did last weekend—" They had gone to a wedding as photographers. "—and I said, 'My wife and I went'." He laughed a little. "Didn't even think about it, it just popped out."

Danielle shrugged. "Well, we have been living together for a while. And, for that matter, we've been a part of each other's lives for a while. I mean... We're taking each other for granted. You know?"

"Isn't that normally a bad thing?"

"Well, normally, yes, but I imagine it starts to happen in any marriage after a while. I can't think ours would be any exception."

He chortled. " 'Our' marriage. We're not married yet, hon."

"No, but we might as well be," she said, kissing his cheek. "And it's been like that for a while now. We're like an old married couple."

"Except for the 'married' part," he said.

"Except for the 'married' part," she agreed.

He looked at her for a long moment.

"Why aren't we married?" he said.

"What?" she said.

"Why don't we get married? I mean, if we're so married already—"

"What, like... Now?" she said.

"Sure," he said, shrugging. "We'll just call everybody up and go down to the courthouse, and that'll be that."

It sounded outrageous... And yet, it had its own appeal. After all, what was the point of a massive ceremony, if the only objective was to make formal what was already true (and had been for a while)? Anyone who knew them, knew that this was the end result. In fact, the only people who had doubted it were she and David themselves.

"Tonight?" she said. "I haven't a thing to wear."

"Oh, come on," he said, smiling.

"David, it's not like I'm gonna have a second chance at this. This is the one time in my life I'm walking down the aisle. I at least want a white dress. And some flowers. In a church. And I think you owe me an engagement ring. And we have a bunch of people to invite. And we gotta have some sort of reception..."

"Okay, tomorrow night maybe," he said. "But let's do it."

"Tomorrow night?" she said. "You're optimistic."

"We've got a few hours before the shops close," he said. "We'll go now, and start making the phone calls. But we can do it."

She smiled. "Okay. Let's do it."

And so there was some pretty frantic shopping that night, and a lot of astonished replies when they made the phone calls. The Stantons were invited, of course, and Scott was going to be the best man and Nicole the maid of honor. Danielle's parents were astonished to hear of the news, but David's parents just laughed. "We knew this was going to happen," they said. "Anyone could tell."

"No, it's not that," Danielle's mom protested. "It's that they aren't giving this event the time and effort it deserves! It's a big day! You don't just get married every day, you know!"

"We do, evidently," Danielle snickered.

There was a fair amount to be done, but with all their family and friends mobilized, they managed to accomplish it all. The hardest part was finding a church and priest who was available on such short notice. But it all worked out in the end, and in a brief but pleasant ceremony, Danielle Sabrina Mayer married David Theodore Glass, and passed from her father's hand to her husband's.

It was a modest ceremony by anybody's standards, with little elaboration; there was barely any music, and the reception was simply some party platters in the church's gathering hall. But Danielle didn't mind; what mattered to her was her family and friends—and they were there. Liz and Carmen, who had been with her since high school; her mother and father, ever-present, ever-knowing; her sister, who was finally growing up. Nicole, who was closer to her than anyone else had ever been. And, of course, David; David, whose presence was like breath, who had been there always and always would be.

Before long, Danielle had to start wrapping things up. "Sorry to kick you all out, but we need to clean up and get to bed. It's getting late."

"Oh, come on," said Liz, grinning, "you just got married."

"Yeah," said Danielle, "and we've still got work in the morning."

"Aren't you going on a honeymoon or something?" Sonya asked.

"Ha!" said David. "Like we have time or money for that."

"At least you guys should go home," said Scott. "We can clean up. You're newlyweds. There's things newlyweds do together, traditionally."

David and Danielle looked at each other for a moment, and then shrugged. "Not really," said Danielle. "Been there, done that."

"Maybe tomorrow," said David. "But it's been a long day and I think we just wanna get to bed. After we clean up this reception thing."

Scott shook his head. "You guys have the most boring marriage ever."

So they cleaned up, and wished their family and friends farewell, and drove home, and went to sleep. And during the night she awoke to feel him curled up behind her in the dark the way he always did, and his arm curled around her the way it always was, and felt something jostling her finger when she went to put her hand on his. It was a silver wedding band. Oh yeah, she thought, we're married. I'm not Danielle Mayer anymore. I'm Danielle Glass.

She had no idea what life might bring her from here on out. One day they should think about owning a house, for instance—especially if they wanted to have children of their own. That was a frightening idea and exciting all at once: a daughter, that looked like him? A son that looked like her? (That could be terrifying.) What was it like to own a house? It would mean more housework, obviously, since any place they might own would need to be larger than this 700-square-foot apartment. Anything that she owned they would need to take better care of too. What kind of money would they need? More than they were making now, that was certain. They might have to take loans, which meant paying off the student ones as soon as possible—which was another stifling thought. Heck, what if one of their cars broke and they needed to buy a new one? All these things were unknown experiences to her, things she had never done before—much less with David. She wondered if she should feel like her future had changed, unfolded in some way; she wondered if she should feel like she was entering a new world.

Because she didn't. As far as she was concerned, nothing much had changed at all. All that's changed is that we are finally—finally—where we are meant to be.

She brought his hand to her lips and kissed it. Then she nestled into his arms and went back to sleep.