Park turned it over and recognized her scratchy handwriting. It filled his head with song lyrics.

He wondered if she’d read it, and whether she thought Ozymandias was a villain, and what she thought Dr. Manhattan meant when he said, “Nothing ever ends,” at the end. Park still wondered what Eleanor thought about everything.

(Maybe he’d looked at it too much.) He’d stopped trying to bring her back.

But he couldn’t summon her. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember what she looked like, even when he was looking at her picture.

He’d stopped trying to bring her back. She only came back when she felt like it, anyway, in dreams and lies and broken-down déjà vu.

You think that holding someone hard will bring them closer. You think that you can hold them so hard that you’ll still feel them, embossed on you, when you pull away.

She was pretty sure she’d thank him for saving her life. Not just yesterday, but, like, practically every day since they’d met. Which made her feel like the dumbest, weakest girl. If you couldn’t save your own life, was it even worth saving?

“I just can’t believe that life would give us to each other,” he said, “and then take it back.” “I can,” she said. “Life’s a bastard.” He held her tighter, and pushed his face into her neck. “But it’s up to us…” he said softly. “It’s up to us not to lose this.”

Like she was more comfortable out of her shirt than in it. Like she was happy inside out.