The heads poke out of the door and watch me separate from Amelie.

"I have to finish the lecture," she says. "Wait for me in the office?" She reaches into her jacket pocket and gives me a key. I press my lips into her temple, and I can feel her smile. She steps away and to the door. "There better be some brilliant questions for me or I'll have to double your homework." She turns in the doorway and mouths, 'I love you too'.

The three words I felt for a while but saying them didn't occur to me. I thought she knew. If saying the three words was what she needed, I would've done it long ago. Saying the words was the easiest part and I'm glad it's over with. I should've done it sooner. The logic of waiting to do it perfectly made sense, but it doesn't any longer. My need for perfection is something therapists and parents worked on with me. Leaving something unfinished, not the exact way I want it, fills me with anxiety. If 'I love you' was the missing piece in getting Amelie to be with me, I've reached my goal.

Back at my car, I grab the box of Amelie's letters and carry it to her office. I set it on her desk, that's as cluttered as I've seen it the last time I was here: a stack of books on one corner, a mostly empty cup of coffee next to them, a handful of pens, pencils and highlighters scattered over pieces of paper in the middle, a closed laptop, and three frames with collages of photos, most of whom I recognize. My face is on one of them.

There are little piles of papers between her desk and the bookshelves that have a lot of empty spaces. Perfect for some of Tall's books she inherited. I look at the titles and as I scan through them, I recognize several I didn't expect her to have. Some of them Mom has in her office. "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome" by Tony Atwood, "Thinking in Pictures" by Temple Grandin. She researched too. I pull "Thinking in Pictures" out and start reading. My mind doesn't think in pictures, another reason it's a spectrum, but it would be an fascinating way to experience the world.

"Hey," Amelie is next to me. She bends down to the chair I'm in and presses our foreheads together. Her smell, so new several months ago, has grown familiar. The newly straightened hair does not fascinate me as much as her curls did, but it's smooth and I can run my fingers through it without getting caught in tangles. Her brown eyes are so close they morph into a uni-eye and sit back to get her face into proper focus. The symmetry of it has always made my heart beat faster. So unusual. So attractive to my mind. "What are you reading?" I close the book and show her the cover. "Oh, you should listen to her TED talk if you like the book. I'd love to meet her one day. They made a move based on this book too. Or is it too weird for you?"

"Because I'm on the spectrum as well?" How can this be the first time we've addressed it since she got back to the US.

"I mean.. yeah, not that you are the same, and I know you don't like talking about it-"

"Why do you say that?"

"You never talk about it, so I thought it's not something you are comfortable discussing."

"It's not that."

"Is it only me you are not comfortable discussing it with?" She sits down on the opposite chair and crosses her arms on her chest.

"Not that at all. We've talked about it before. We covered that I'm on the spectrum and I don't have anything to add to that. The diagnosis hasn't changed in the intervening years. It will never change, if that's something you were hoping to hear."

"What? No. I would never expect that, or want that. I though that as a couple, we should talk about it. Not right now, but at some point? I'd like to talk about it and see how the world works, hear it from you."

"The world works exactly the same way. I don't affect it that much." I put the book on her desk, careful not to disturb her disarray. "What would you like to know?|"

"I...it's not like I have a list of questions. I'm not exactly prepared. What do you think I should know?"

"I'm different."

"You are, but it doesn't mean something is wrong with you. It's just that, different."

"Now you sound like my childhood therapist.."

"And what did your childhood therapist tell you?"

"The usual. 'You are who you are for a reason and the world wouldn't be where it is now without Aspies.'"

"Isn't that true?"

"It probably is. But I couldn't say that to kids who bullied me in school. And I can't tell that to Mom when she asks me if I cried about Tall's death yet. Like I'm on the clock."

"You haven't cried?" Amelie's eyes grow big. "I assumed the days you spent by yourself you-" She stops talking. "What have you been doing?"

"Researching. Trying to understand, to figure out how to do grief. All these rules I can note, I can follow, but with grief, the rules are not really there or the rules that are there are impossible for me to follow. It's a constant case of trying to fit my square brain into a round hole of expected and agreed upon behaviors. Sometimes it is something that I can make a new habit out of, but other times it's like trying to make a tiger survive on a vegetarian diet-not possible."

"Why do you try to be something or someone you are not?"

"When you live in a country where everyone else speaks a different language, you can choose to never learn it, but if you learn it, it is an advantage. It's a fine line between not loosing myself and communicating better."

"And it is a two-way street. I learned a lot about Aspergers and the spectrum, but I want to learn from you, feel closer to you. It's like my parents when they spoke Frenglish with each other. They both chose to use both languages." She takes my hands into hers. "We can figure it out."

Her voice is a constant I anchor myself in. The one thing that hasn't changed. I run my thumbs against her wrists, lift my index finger and trace the contour of her cheek, put a strand of hair behind her ear and she presses her cheek into the palm of my hand. Her nearness drowns me in an anxious cloud of want. Will that ever stop? Or is it a gift I get to enjoy as long as she's near? I make myself meet her eyes.

"What do you see in me, what do I look like in your eyes?" she asks.

I watch her gaze move from one of my eyes to another. I close my eyes and reconstruct the distinct parts of Amelie I've cataloged for myself. "It's not about the entire picture. It never is for me. The beauty lies in little pieces and parts of the world. Like how springy your curls were, the way your skin feels against mine, how equidistant your eyes are from your nose, your honesty, the way you are kind without noticing it, your willingness to help. There's a physical pull I feel to you I can not explain, and it is a nice, very nice thing to have but I can also sit in silence in the room with you when you read and feel at peace, know all is right where I want it."

"You make me sound better than I am." Amelie tries to stand up. I open my eyes and place my hands on her shoulders. I want her to understand. I want her to get what I see. She asked for it.

"You are not perfect," I say, and she scoffs. "And you are not hiding it. I've seen your imperfections and they are things I can live with. I think. And I know I have a ton of my own, so you not pretending to be perfect is perfect."

"Not pretending to be perfect is perfect, I like the sounds of that." She smiles again and maybe she does get what I mean. How much easier my life is with her in it. "I look forward to us being even more imperfect with each other," she says.

"There're things I will miss, that will drive you crazy. And you have to tell me about the ones that really bother you, that are deal breakers. And I will do the same with you."

"Any deal breakers right now?"

"You moving to another country again will definitely be one." I mean it as a joke, but that wipes the smile off her face, and she grows serious. I'm messing this up.

"Not planning to do that. What else?"

"You not telling me what you want, need. Not a deal breaker, no but a request. You have to tell me so I know."

"I get it. I will try, I just don't want to be demanding."

"I want you to be clear, not demanding." She rolls her lips between her teeth, a tell of hers I've come to understand. "What is it? What did I mess up already?"

"I want to spend more time with you, we don't have to see each other every day, I understand you have a lot of work, so do I, and I didn't expect that we'll see each other as much as we did in the first two weeks, but last week was hard for me and I wanted to be with you and you didn't seem to want me near. You pulling away without telling me why, while spending time with others, made me feel I imagined the connection we shared. Made me doubt myself. I felt lonely. Lonelier than before we got back together. I missed you." I can barely hear the last words. She says them in such a low voice.

"But I didn't want to do the wrong thing, didn't want to scare you away. I had to process my thoughts and feelings. And if that doesn't happen, then I fall apart and it will not be better for either of us."

"You could've told me that. I read the books and I thought I understood it theoretically but when it was me and my emotions and you not talking to me, it's hard to overlook. Reading about it is one thing, experiencing it was so much harder. Relationships require more attention as they become more important. One of the things we'll have to figure out a strategy for, so we are ready when it happens again."

"When. I like it. It means you think we have a future."

"It means I want to have a future. If you do."

"I do if we are in this together. It's not going to be easy."

"I'm not looking for easy, I'm looking for making our imperfections work together." She kisses me and the texture of her a bit chapped lips on mine brings the thoughts of what those lips have done to me before and how long a week without them is. I'm the one standing up now, getting us both to our feet, closer, where my hands and mouth can have a free roam. I untuck her shirt from the waist of her skirt and find the valley of her spine, run my fingers up along it until I meet the clasp of her bra. She pulls away.

"We're in my office." She glances at the door that's closed but not locked.

"You have a key, don' t you?"

"Yes, but-"

I return my lips to hers and unclasp her bra.

She steps out of my reach. "This is so inappropriate"

I grab the key from her desk and hand it to her. I want to lock the door, but it is her choice. "I've never done it in an office before." She wanted honesty. I can do honesty almost too well.

She looks at me, the key, the door. "Oh, fuck it," she says and takes the necessary steps, locks the door and takes off her jacket. "Where were we?"

We meet in the middle of the room. My fingers make quick work unbuttoning her blouse, removing the bra. I touch her with every part of me I can. The skirt falls down without my help, and her hands find the button of my jeans. I shouldn't have started this. Could've waited till we got home. Her hands find their way under my tshirt, and I let go of her long enough to pull it off. Amelie forces me to drop it and returns my hands to her chest, and hers to my jeans. The fake leather of the chair squeaks against my ass, as I place Amelie on top of me. Her head rolls and for a second the chair creaks enough to slow me down and wonder if I'm about to break another piece of furniture. Amelie's rolling hips erase that thought, and I let go of any remaining reservations. Our breaths sound broken. The chair survives.

***

The yacht is smaller than I imagined and the ride to get us three nautical miles away from the shoreline is choppy, the waves break against the nose then the sides of the boat and light drizzle form above is indistinguishable from the spray of the lake water below. When Amelie came up with her idea, I was not sure it was necessary, but she didn't think throwing the biodegradable paper urn with Tall's ashes into the water and watching it float away from us was enough to honor Tall's memory. She told me how heartfelt the one-year anniversary of her Dad's passing was and how much the photos she and her Mom had collected from friends, family and colleagues made it a celebration of his life, instead of a memory of his death.

The boat's cabin's plenty big for the seven of us. The urn is a blue cardboard oval with a triangle opening in on one side. I pull my piece of paper from the back pocket of my pants and unfold it.

"Thank you for going along with my idea," Amelie's voice is at her lecturer volume. She sounds better than she did last week, but the sound of "I love you" in her horse voice is a memory I will never let go of. "The paper I asked you to write down your contributions is also biodegradable and will dissolve in the lake without harming any wildlife." She looks at the paper in her hands. "As I was the one who proposed the idea, which, as Ben pointed out"-she smiles at me and I know she's referring to my insistence this is unnecessary, and her explaining it might make it more personal for those who attend-"not in Tall's will, I'm thankful you all found a piece of writing that has a connection to Tall for you." She scans our small group and they look back at her. It's the same people who were at the impersonal fishbowl of a room at the hospital. "I'll start," says Amelie. "This is a quote from a book Tall sent me home with the second time we met.

'Who are you, Martin Eden?' He demanded of himself in the looking-glass, that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and curiously. [...] Who are you? What are you? Where do you belong? Who are you? and what are you? damn you! And are you going to make good?'

Amelie folds her piece of paper lengthwise and feeds it through the slot in the urn. No one speaks and there's no clapping for well-delivered words. I've never known until Linda showed me the letter that Tall and Amelie were so close during her time away. Herr attachment to him makes so much more sense. "Tall was the one to encourage that I ask myself those questions," Amelie says. "To know myself better, and do things not because they're expected of me but because I chose them. He was a mentor and a friend and I miss him so much." Her voice breaks, and she steps closer to me. I put my arm around her shoulders and wait for another person to step forward. When no one does, I look down at my paper. I might as well be next.

"Sautéed skillet potatoes," I read the words in front of me. "Clean potatoes and scrub them (unpeeled), cube the potatoes, heat oil in a large skillet, add potatoes and cook for about 10 minutes, remove potatoes, sauté onion, bell pepper, oregano, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper, cook for about 4-5 minutes, add potatoes to mixture and cook until potatoes are browned and crisped." I fold the paper back and drop it into the urn's opening. All eyes are on me. The saying something about Tall part is next, based on Amelie's example, and I am not prepared but I have to learn these things anyway. "That was an excerpt from 'Cooking for Dummies' - the first book I checked out with my brand new library card at the age of eighteen. The library card was Tall's idea. Encouraging me to learn how to feed myself was Tall's idea. This was the first recipe I made in Tall's kitchen and we ate it together. We both agreed I burned it, but we ate it. It took me three more tires to get it right. We ate only sautéed skillet potatoes that week." Amelie hangs on to my bicep and rests her head on my shoulder.

Angie sings a song Tall helped her write the lyrics for. Mike talk about an old Taekwondo rules book Tall got him as a present. Dad reads a paragraph from the Chicago Tribune he and Tall shared the subscription to. Mom shows us the notes she scribbled from some rare sheet music Tall helped her find and turns on a recording of her playing them on her violin. Linda recites a poem she learned at Tall's insistence. Each paper makes it into the blue urn. We watch it bob on the surface of the water, floating, carried by the waves. It is not Tall in it. I close my eyes and conjure Tall's voice, the way he smelled of books and dust, the wrinkles on his face, long earlobes, translucent skin of his hands, his words, his love for me. He never told me he loved me but I know it.

'I love you too,' I say to the memory of my friend. I open my eyes and look at the faces of the people I gathered on the boat. "I love you all," I say to them. Amelie squeezes my arm, and I get six variations on those three words back.

I have nothing and so much more to say.

4.15.21

Here you have it. Final Chapter of Draft one of Love Graduate. There's an epilogue, but I'll keep it for another day this week. This week, I promise.

Thirty-seven Chapters, three-and-a-half months of active writing, countless sleepless nights, and so many writing highs.

It'll be hard to say good-bye to Ben and Amelie, but I will be returning to them in a bit when I start my offline edits. I look forward to making this first draft into a much better version of itslef at the end. If you are interested in reading what the edited version will be like - let me know.

What changes you'd like to see?

Any unresolved plotline I forgot about? Anything you'd like me to add more or in the next version? Anything that can go?

For all of you who stuck with Ben, Amelie and me this far: I love your support. Writing is a much less lonely road when I get to see the readers reactions, comments, and votes. Interacting with you and seeing Ben and Amelie has been a gift and I love this opportunity.

My hope is you liked these imperfect characters and will join me on the next adventure with new imperfect in a different way characters. I'll share my plans for the next months after I post the Epilogue.

With gratitude,

GR