“Here’s the thing,” she says, sitting on the edge of the pier with her toes in the water, holding the remnants of the bottle of vodka.

“I’ve loved two boys in my life. One of them I loved as the person who understood me the most; my best friend, my confidante. The other I was in love with; the blond, crazily clever boy who made me believe I was beautiful. And both of them told me they loved me, and both of them left.”

I sit in silence, looking at the stars and waiting for her to continue.

“What I want to know is, why? Why do they do these things? At the end, my best friend told me I only cared about myself, and that he hated who I’d become. Did he ever stop to ask me if I was okay, how I was doing? Did he see the days without food, or the dark clouds I always felt? Maybe he didn’t care like I thought he did. Maybe he did only care about her.”

She sips from the bottle.

“At the end, the one I was in love with didn’t even say anything. He was the only one who ever made me feel like I was enough, like I could do the things I thought were impossible, even if it was only eating breakfast every day. We didn’t talk for months, and I was inconsolable. Now we’re friends again, but I can’t tell him I still love him. Why’d he tell me he loved me when all along he planned to leave?”

Here she giggles, and looks up at me, and I see the tears sparkling in her eyes despite the laughter, and she asks her last question.

“Why does no one ever stay?”

And the awful thing is, I don’t have an answer.