A lot of days had passed—almost two weeks since she had received the message from Joe—when Eve finally resolved to look for Simon in the only place she knew he might be, and that was at the grocery store near Dawn's apartment. He hadn't been to Toast in a long time, and Eve had accepted a paid internship as a copyeditor and given Toast her two weeks' notice recently, so she didn't expect she'd be seeing him there again.

It was with confused yet bittersweet thoughts that Eve headed to the Food Mart. She did not know what she might say to Simon, but as she'd thought about the message his friend had sent, she had grown persistently more tender-hearted in her thoughts of him. This young man was a person, just like she was, and he was as capable of heartache and woe and anxiety as everyone else. She was not alone in her troubles, though she, like most other people, usually fell under the assumption that she was. She wrongly determined that no one could ever understand her, no matter what, that this was some life pain peculiar to her, something she alone would have to suffer. How wrong she was! How selfish! When Eve mentally stepped away from her predicament, she recognized with what narcissism she interpreted daily events. And with each day that passed, she found herself trying to recollect every word Simon had said to her in that brief encounter they'd had. In that moment—on that walk—she'd quickly built a wall to block out anything Simon might have said, to qualify his conversation as juvenile, not because she really believed that it would be but because she'd been afraid it might not. Eve had purposely albeit nearly subconsciously bricked herself in so that she didn't have to really think about what the boy said. Now, though, she wanted to remember it but was having some difficulty in doing so. She'd been so stubborn when he was talking to her that she'd done a good job of ignoring him.

All she knew for certain was that he'd spoken of isolation. The manner in which every human being sequestered himself in his skull, and that every little move he made in his life was an attempt at stepping out of that aloneness which, Eve reflected, could never possibly work. No matter what a person did—send a message, give a glance, share a coffee—his mind was off-limits to everyone but himself; he alone was privy to those unspoken, constant thoughts that plagued him. He could never know how his actions or words were perceived; he could never truly know if he was understood. All people were prisoners, and their prisons prohibited them from ever really knowing anyone or anything but the interior of their heads. This was impossible to change.

Why had Simon been so interested in talking with her? Eve wondered more than once along her walk. She could never know for certain, but she hoped to meet him with the knowledge that both he and she were aware of their own seclusions and inhibitions.

Early evening was falling when she reached the grocery store, but the night air was hot against her skin, and there were enough people out that the darkness did not scare her. The walk had been much needed in order for her to piece together her senses. The parking lot was busy, full of cars pulling in and out and people pushing carts this way and that, leaving them in inappropriate places and chattering away on phones. For just a second, Eve wondered what she looked like and thought to smooth her hair and straighten herself out, but she fast realized the pointlessness of such vanity and quickened her pace toward the building's entrance.

Eve had not thought that he may not be working. If his brother had died two weeks ago, it was likely that Simon was not at work, but for some reason she had a strong feeling that he would be there. If he wasn't, she would pick up the few items she needed for her pantry and head home.

The first person she saw upon approaching the check-out lanes was an orange-haired man who couldn't have been younger than twenty but was dressed as if he was fifteen. He struck her as strange—smiling a bit distractedly as he bagged groceries that were shoved in his direction—but she did not let this deter her from asking him whether Simon was working.

"Just took his break. Probably out back."

Eve thanked him and decided that she would leave the building and walk around to the back of it rather than go search for a break room. Hearing that Simon was indeed there caused her to flush in spite of herself; her stomach felt strange, as if it was being touched from the inside. As she rounded the building in the dimming light of the summer evening, she felt momentarily lightheaded. She nearly reproached herself but then laughed aloud at the notion—she was human, and her body was going to feel many things without her permission. This was nothing she could avoid.

And then, just as she finished her laugh, hardly knowing it had been audible to anyone but herself, Eve saw Simon. He was sitting on the building's back steps, arms resting on his knees as he stared out into the night. His silhouette was traced by the yellow light above the grocery store door, and she watched it for a few seconds before nearly stumbling over a crate, at which point, he turned sharply in her direction without getting up.

Simon said nothing, so Eve approached him slowly. She hadn't entirely thought of what she might say to him; her ideas of conversation were vague at best. She stammered a greeting and her own name, at which point he stood and descended the remaining steps.

"Eve?" he asked, though the answer to his question was obvious.

She came under the light, and her face turned golden with it. Simon's features remained somewhat shadowed, as his back was to the glow. "I . . . thought I would find you, here."

He smiled wanly. "I didn't know you were looking for me."

Eve's face became serious. "Simon, I don't really know why I wanted to see you. It's not quite . . . explainable."

He was quiet, thinking, before replying softly. "I don't think you strange. I don't know why I wanted to see you, either, except . . . " He hesitated but finished, perhaps encouraged by her seeking him out. "Except that I . . . I felt different near you."

"Different?"

"Yes. I'd never felt it."

They were quiet for a moment, but he chose to elaborate.

"I dislike not seeing you, but I don't know how to be when I do see you. There's not much more to it than that. I don't know how else to explain, but I didn't think I would have to. I didn't think I'd see you again."

Eve did her best to overcome the physical trepidation she felt. She motioned to the stairs. "Come on, let's sit down. I might pass out if I don't."

"Are you sick?" Simon followed her to the stairs and positioned himself on them next to her, five stairs up from the ground, his long legs stretched nearly twice the length of hers.

"No," Eve replied. "But I want to talk to you. Can you promise me that you won't say anything until I've done?"

He nodded, a kind, almost sad expression on his face.

She took a deep breath. Warmth radiated from him. Or maybe it was radiating from her. Deciding that the heat was from the summer air, she rushed a bit into her words but slowed as speaking calmed her. "You make me nervous, Simon, and as ridiculous as I know that is, I can't help it. I'm nervous only because (I assume) I don't understand your intentions. What you said the last time I saw you—about people being trapped in their minds—I didn't listen to it then, but I do know it's true. I wish I could understand you and other people that cross into my life and seem somehow important in ways I can't figure out." She thought briefly of Oscar and faltered slightly in her words but continued once her brain buried him back into itself. "You, Simon. At first, I thought nothing of you except that you were so nice to see as a familiar face drinking tea. I thought nothing more than that. But as these months have passed, you've seemed, well . . . essential, somehow, as if there's some purpose to meeting you. But just like everything else, I won't be able to figure out what that purpose is, and you'll fade into the background at some point, like everyone else does, because you and I, no matter what, will never actually know one another. I knew something . . . something almost supernatural seemed to put you here. You don't know it, but you helped someone very dear to me who might have died otherwise on the night you took him to your friend's home. I will always be so grateful to you for that. So . . . grateful, Simon."

She looked up at him, but he was void of expression. She could not read him at all, and a sudden fear flashed through her. Did he think her stupid or odd?

"You knew him?"

Eve glanced at her hands, which were in her lap. "He was someone very important to me." Sorrow tinged her words. "We aren't close, anymore. He's gone from my life, I know. I miss him every day, and I know that it's best if we're apart, but I hate it—I hate the fact that something disallows us from being with the people we feel like we most need, even if it's for our own good that they're taken from us. Things divide us, separate us. It's not fair, but that's the way it is. Lifestyles, opinions about the way things should be, fear that one isn't right—oh, there are a million things that build barriers between people, and most of them don't make any sense at all; that's the real pain of it. The ultimate barrier is, obviously, death, and yet that one seems at least . . . natural." She lowered her voice, calmed herself. "I know that someone dear to you just died, Simon. And I'm so sorry for it. I'm so sorry." When she looked up, she was surprised to see that, though he was gazing at the ground, he had removed his glasses and was rubbing his chin, mouth, and nose.

Eve lifted a hand, gently brushed the hair out of his face and behind his ear. Simon turned to her, still expressionless. Eyes locked, he shook his head and lowered his eyebrows. "I don't know why you're here," he repeated.

She'd never looked directly into his eyes like that; they'd always been shielded by his glasses. They were possessed of such a depth that Eve felt as if she could see an entire world inside of them, as if they didn't open into his brain but instead were tunnels to a complex universe, and in that moment, she felt what she could only later describe as being in love. Leaning over, Eve took him in her arms, and had anyone been there to watch, he might have smiled or frowned at the strange sight, the slight woman enfolding the tall, gangly spider-man in her thin white wisps of arms. They were not people in that moment. They were not boy and woman, eighteen-year-old and twenty-five-year-old, not strangers or familiars, not indifferent or partial. They were none of that, just sorrow and gratitude, perception of the very raw cruelties that broke them from one another, everyone from each other, knowledge of a reality that would keep them and those they felt drawn to always apart; yet also—in that fraction of a second during which they were allowed—they glimpsed knowledge of an even greater eternity, where restraints of any form were absent. She held his head to her heart, stroked his hair. And he did not let go. For a long, long while, he did not let go, and she did not mind.

When at last they parted, an immediate sense of grief welled up in Eve's chest. The bricks were falling back into place, even as they attempted to use words to fill the absence created by their separation.

"What will you do, now?" she asked, hating the sound of her words in the night air after what had happened.

"I'm going to school at the end of the summer. My aunt and cousins need me. I'll stay with them." He, too, cringed at his voice.

Eve breathed deeply. "I have to go, now. I wish you the best, Simon. I've never meant that more."

He smiled fragilely. "I know."

And then she left. As the darkness swallowed her, she looked back and saw Simon facing her direction. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but they were mingled joy and sorrow. She knew instinctually that they would never see one another again, but she would never forget what he'd taught her, what she'd felt toward him. Her days were inevitably moving some direction away from the one she'd thought she was heading. This was good. This was right.