Conversation Following a Shower.

"It's okay."

"It's not okay."

"It'll be okay."

I turned and stared at him. "No, it won't. It won't be okay. People go away and they don't come back, Ryan. That is not ever going to be okay."

I stepped out of the shower and wrapped my hair in a towel, then wrapped another around myself. I was staring in the mirror when he spoke again. "Do you ever think that . . . maybe, maybe it's all a bad dream? And one day we'll wake up when it was perfect again?"

I unwrapped the towel from my body and started drying my legs. "I know it's not just a bad dream."

"How?" he asked. His voice was . . . smaller. Not small, but smaller.

"Dreams don't scar your arms."

He continued as if he hadn't heard me. "And maybe . . . maybe . . . you know those times when you're happy? When you're happy and you feel so fucking bad about it?"

I turned to stare at him, not saying anything.

"Maybe, maybe we wake up. But we don't know it. It's like a waking dream. And you don't call her because you think it's over and I don't call home to talk to my dad because I still think he's dead. But maybe . . . maybe it's actually okay. Like, for real. We just don't know we're awake."

I wrapped the towel back around my body and walked toward the door. "I know you don't believe that, Ryan." I told him. And then I left him alone with his silence.