My girlfriends wanted a guy just like Cal, and his friends wanted a shot at me."Our pre-engagement period lasted almost two years, and in that time we...were apart for classes and vacations. If we were at school, we were together. It took about an hour to get the housing office to reassign Cal's roommate out of his room, and me into it, and from then on, we were the perfect couple."For the next two years, we lived like one person. Cal loved to show me off to his parents, their friends, and his. Expecting a door handle, she had wrapped her fingers around it, and now felt it firmly rest in her palm. Time seemed to stand still. She looked up at him. He looked like she felt - shocked, horrified, and unable to speak. Neither of them moved a muscle, as if moving would make it all real. They just stood, faces mere centimetres apart. She saw the shape of his pink lips, smelled the beer on his breath, heard the rapid thump of blood in his chest. There was nothing but the space between them, no. I needed to go fast enough, though, to keep the lining moving so I'd be able to lay it down on the water in the right manner.When I set the line down for the first time of the morning, everything was in synch. The line flew out from the momentum of my arm movements and pulled up just short, causing the leader to carry just a bit more and settle, ever so lightly, on the water, the fly landing as if it were an actual insect settling down to drink.The water flowed down toward me, bringing my fly. ..I wouldn't feel right just accepting charity like that," I grimaced."Then pay me for them," Amanda said, abruptly reverting to her 'normal'voice. "Jason- Jacinta, it's not fair that I was born into this family.It's not fair that you were born into that body. But we can take stepsto improve our circumstances." Like you going to college?" I asked."Precisely," Amanda confirmed. "Or you embracing 'Jacinta'. I alreadyown several dresses that don't fit me as well as others. It would be asimple.