Or maybe not suicidal but she did say, on one occasion, sometimes I just don’t want to live anymore, and it didn’t seem like a ploy for attention, it seemed like she didn’t even remember that I was there on the phone, that it was something she was murmuring to herself, maybe just to hear the words, to feel how they sounded in her mouth or maybe — I don’t know — maybe she was actually verbalizing a perfectly valid thought in her head. So, months later when we have our fight at the Jägermeister-fueled party and she smashes the host’s coffee mug against the back porch door and sits on the rail of the balcony, feet dangling, shuddering with rage and sadness, I can’t help but think: She’s going to leap off that thing. And I hug her from behind, just like she used to like it, and she jerks herself away and calls me asshole and fucking asshole and I’m just trying to drag her back off the railing and I swear, for just a second, I swear she lets go, she lets herself fall forward, so I get scared and forcibly pull her down and she storms off and I follow her and she gets in her car and I get in too and grab her keys and say I won’t let her drive and that’s when the physical assault begins, the punching and shoving and finally I let her go and she just about takes my leg off by peeling out before I’m completely out of the car and I’m convinced she’s going to drive off a cliff or into a telephone pole or something and I have to stay up all night, twelve hours straight, before learning that she just went home and would like me to return her special pendant.