New work:
“I do not love you,” he finally said, this boy I had met only once, “except because I love you. I go from loving you to not loving you. I hate you no end.” He was quoting Pablo Neruda, though again I did not know this yet.
I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t say anything for the longest time. I heard him breathing down the phone, then he started to whistle, as if I wasn’t there at all. It was a casual melodic whistle, a kind of innocent and bored and unaffected tra-la-la.
“Well, goodbye,” I said.