We climbed the back stairs, steep and untreated, past the old paint cans and up to the roof deck. She led and I followed closely behind, enjoying my view of her. After pushing the door open with my shoulder we stepped onto the tar paper roof, into the brisk air, a silhouetted skyline emerging in front of us. It was neither cold nor warm, but when the wind picked up we had to huddle, me in my jacket, she in her robe-like gray cardigan. The sun was setting. Half the sky burned a soft orange while the other half faded into shadow. Slowly the night enveloped us.

We liked being near each other but we were still unsure of our boundaries. We sat in adjacent chaise lounge chairs, formerly white but now distinctly weather beaten from being up on the roof all summer long. We alternately faced each other and then faced the city. We lit and smoked cigarettes, one after another. We were restless. We talked passionately, and covered what seemed like everything. The kind of conversation that bursts from the excitement of all the gaps yet to be filled. The kind of conversation we knew we could have only so many times before it became something different. Truths came out, sometimes to be realized only after being spoken out loud. We felt intimately close. We felt the pull of our undeniable attraction, but we didn’t yet fully understand why. We discovered a lot of it that night, and the many nights that followed.

But that night… that night her brown hair, long and wispy and straight, whirled around her brown eyes in the wind. In those eyes I saw sadness, I saw hope, I saw fear, I saw joy. I saw an infinity of possible futures sprawling out before us. I leaned back and took a picture.

Those infinite futures have narrowed themselves down to this one present, and that one picture. And that picture conjures these words. And that’s enough.