God, he was so damned good looking. Alex’s dashing good looks and bedroom eyes had girls dropping into his bed. I never ran after him, I could never compete with the line of women laying claim to his attention. Never even considered it. We were all always together; at work, at parties, dinners. I knew I was never in the running, but I was painfully aware of how handsome he was. He slid his arm around my waist to distract me the night we were divvying up the bill after Elaine’s going away party and pulled me toward him a little. I was collecting the money from everyone and he was charming his way out of paying. I knew what he was doing, but I liked his arm around me. It was a practiced strategy. He talked into my ear, it was playful and done in jest. It must have been what the girls felt when he got them into bed: he was the sun and he was shining just for me for those two minutes and it is a gift I keep quietly to myself. It is an immense pain to realize we have no power to thwart the universe and the unfolding of life and when we stop combatting the turns and tides, we are carried along to something better. It makes me so sad that it fills me with hope.