It's really unexpected. We were all in the stands holding hands and taking down everyone's splits. We ran in the first heat, the slowest heat, and won by a lot.

I am taking it more as it comes (because it was unexpected),

Nothing, I learned, brings you into the present quite like holding hands. The past seemed irrelevant; the future, unnecessary.

Later, holding Milo’s hand in the dark, Jacob felt that it was only in recovering it that he learned what he had been in danger of losing. The touch of Milo’s hand seemed to remind him of parts of himself that he had already begun to forget about.

The hands on a clock move without regard to the hands you hold.

His hand glides down my arm, folds over my hand. His fingers lace with mine, palms kissing. I can feel the fast thud of his heart through this single touch.