Drowning. That’s what you said it felt like. Slipping beneath the surface, descending deeper until you started to choke. Your fingers trailed across my chest as we lay in that hot little room, lost somewhere unreachable together. ‘It’s like I’m being swallowed up,’ you told me. ‘Like I can’t catch my breath when I’m with you.’ You propped yourself up, your fingers sliding into your hair, and winked. I saw that little smile and I realised, at least on some level, that you knew you could do nothing to stop it.

But Chloe, I never thought of it as drowning. It was nothing like that for me. Because when we drown, we fight, we panic and kick out. We gasp for every desperate breath as we try to escape. Because when we drown, we die.

Maybe you don’t remember, but you didn’t fight. You allowed yourself to sink. You don’t want a way out. You don’t want to forget about me. You tell me you have changed, but to me you are still everything I ever wanted.

This isn’t drowning, Chloe, I promise you that.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die either.

That’s not what love is about.