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We explored the city together, heading to the opera, the theater, hidden, downtown cafes only he knew about. I got my first tattoo under his careful watch. It was a heart, with an arrow inside of it. Only later did I stop to think that maybe being shot in the heart wasn't a good thing. He and I clicked. We were perfect together. I loved his friends, he loved mine, and we were all a happy crowd. Too happy maybe. I wouldn't have believed what happened next if it hadn't happened to me. We went for Chinese. We ordered three kinds of chicken, fried rice, and eggrolls. After he payed the bill, the waitress gave us our fortune cookies. I hated the way fortune cookies tasted, but he told me to crack mine open anyway. I did. Inside was an ominous quote: For every dose of happiness in the world, you must endure twice as much pain. I can still remember the way I almost cried as thoughts of his leaving for Iraq leapt to mind. He held me close and ordered the waitress to bring me another fortune cookie. He broke it open for me and read aloud some juvenile pun about traveling the world. As if that would fix it. I let him think it would. Secretly I didn't believe so. He'd only been in Iraq for six months when I got the message that there'd been an ambush. Nobody had made it out alive. And then I died.

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