Each day since two Thursday’s prior, tears had fallen down Jacob’s rose-tinted cheeks at least once, sometimes more. He had increased his dose of therapy to three sessions a week since Paul left, up from two per week the month before and one per week the month before that. “Things just can’t get any worse,” said Jacob, voice breaking, sat upon a smug, cream-colored sofa in his therapist’s dingy office. “Jacob,” she replied with a smooth monotone, “you’re just going to have to come to terms with the facts. Just like we all have had to in the past year since the announcement. These things are hard, your feelings are valid, but there’s simply nothing we can do: Earth is dying.” She was a severe-looking blonde woman with a pointy nose, thick, dark spectacles, and a comically oversized potbelly. Jacob didn’t particularly care for her, unsightly and unemotional as she was, but, with the world ending and all, actual, trained therapists were in high-demand and short supply. Additionally, his shoddy state-issued insurance gave him very few choices in provider; she was, at least, better than the previous man, a wild-eyed religious fanatic who ended each session by shouting prayers and splashing him with holy water. Not ideal for a gay atheist born damned to hell. “No, no! You don’t understand, Rachel. The world is ending, yeah that sucks. Whatever. But don’t you get that the reason I’m here has nothing to do with that?” Jacob broke down completely. Between sobs he stammered, “P-Paul said h-he doesn’t l-lo-love me anymore! I just can’t take it! He’s the only thing I care about, don’t you get that?” “Yes, yes, do try and calm down, Jacob.” She handed him a tissue from the tie dye cardboard box on the table beside her, the one drop of life in an otherwise colorless room. He took the tissue, blew his nose violently, then hurled it to the ground, a humiliating display of rage and hurt as it simply twirled gently to rest on the grey carpet below. Jacob stood, spewing a whirlwind of curse words, and, totally blinded by hatred and heartbreak, stormed out, slamming the plywood door as he exited. The concrete sidewalks marking his path home felt soft underfoot; he stomped down with all his might the whole way back to his shoebox school dormitory. Never in his life had he felt such intense, intricate emotions. Never before had he realized that, truly, horribly, there was a downside to the great high called love. Two months later, Jacob found himself sprawled across the puke-green futon that inhabited the tiny room doubling as a living room and kitchen. Opposite him, sat atop a chipped, stained, and cracked wooden table, a boxy television blared. Its pixelated display showed a middle-aged man in a ratty, unwashed suit-and-tie shouting unintelligible nothings next to a graphic which was actively counting down the remaining 15 hours of Earth’s lifespan. Jacob’s eyes were glazed over; his heart and thoughts were equally absent. Outside his second-floor window the chaos was invisible— obscured by tattered and dust-covered curtains — but plainly audible: glass shattering into millions of minuscule fragments, dozens of cars sounding frantic and incessant alarms, the crackle of distant yet unmistakably massive flames consuming huge, terrible lungfuls of oxygen. All of this madness rendered inconsequential by the consistently approaching doom. Jacob had oddly put very little thought into coming to terms with the nearby death of him, his family, friends, pets — oh, well really everything he’d ever known. While the world outside was suicidal with panic, Jacob was — at best — indifferent. At worst, he welcomed the opportunity. It saved him the slight inconvenience of ending things himself. He was, in a sense, already deceased. Emotionally drained, depleted, empty. The Jacob who had once lived, loved, laughed, etcetera had dissolved into the void after quitting therapy, then self-care, and finally actively thinking altogether. “14 hours remain until solar flare X-0993 will swallow our home whole!”; the shouting man on the television was sweaty and overly-animated: Jacob assumed he was high on something, most were nowadays. Professionalism, the rules of society, really everything had long since gone out the window. “Thank goodness. It’s almost over.” A distinct, rhythmic knock emanated from the other side of Jacob’s locked, chained, and bolted front door. Four knocks — a brief pause — then two more. The first was hardly noticed by the borderline-corpse on the futon. But the second repetition cut through the grand walls of hopelessness Jacob had worked so hard to build up — impenetrable as possible — like a freshly-sharpened steak knife through butter. He hadn’t moved an inch in days, maybe more. But he knew this knock. His head cocked back; his previously glassy eyes regained a hint of their original pale blue color. The knock came again. Jacob brushed aside the pile of trash surrounding him and slowly made his way to his feet. He steadied himself on the coffee table as his legs nearly gave way from disuse. However, he remained standing; step-by-step he shuffled closer to the door. His eyes grew wider and wider, as big as saucers by the time his quivering hands finally grasped the rusty brass doorknob. The knock came once more; he turned the knob clockwise slowly: dreadfully so. His shaking, sweaty fingers fumbled to undo the various locks securing the door shut. Finally, he swung it open; time slowed, reality ceased, and everything was — for a brief moment — occurring in slow motion. Before Jacob, directly opposite him across the now-open door’s frame, was the person he knew would be there but, simultaneously, the last person he actually expected to be. It was Paul. Paul, the love of his life. Paul, the barely-older boy to whom Jacob had given many firsts: his first kiss (with tongue), his first love, his first love-making session, and, ultimately, his first gut-wrenching, mind-numbing heartbreak. A steady stream of tears appeared on both of Jacob’s cheeks. He observed the same reaction in Paul. Paul opened his mouth: no words came out. Jacob was similarly speechless. They stood for several minutes, separated by a 12-inch gap of air, simply staring at one another; Jacob used these moments to survey and catalog Paul’s every detail. Finally, the silence broke. “Jacob. It’s so good to see you. You’re looking…well, not so great to be totally honest.” They both made an instant transition from feeling overwhelming shock to utter, absurd hilarity. For the first time in months, Jacob was grinning ear to ear. Paul laughed first, then so did Jacob: neither had the ability to stop. Overwhelmed by pure and total relief, all that needed to be said — as far as Jacob was concerned — was contained as subtext in that short collection of sentences. By the time they finished laughing, they found themselves woven tightly together, limbs entangled and bodies pressed close as if in an effort to merge into one being. Jacob said simply, “Thank you for coming.” Again, the words at face value were near-meaningless. It was the emotion — absolute surrender to what they both knew would be their last moments of joy — that meant something real. For the following final hours, it was possible that Jacob and Paul were the happiest pair upon the face of the planet — or maybe they weren’t, it didn’t matter much anyway. The importance of their last-minute reunion lay in the definite knowledge possessed by both boy’s subconscious’ that, while they may be the last, this collection of moments would be the best and most significant moments ever experienced by either of them. In fact, unlike the generations upon generations who had lived and died to get them here, their love had real significance as one of the last loves ever to be experienced by any human to ever exist. Not much in life is special. Not really special; extremely rare cases achieve uniqueness and, therefore, notoriety. Maybe some significant advances or destructions may gain the same status as “kinda special”. But never, before this moment, had a love that would have been — in any time prior to the present — truly ordinary, become one of mankind’s final (and therefore greatest) accomplishments. Although no outside observers existed to witness it, the mark made by Jacob and Paul on history is unmistakable and unmatched. In their final minutes of life, they lay, still and content, loving and rejoicing in the moments they had, instead of joining their peers outside in the misery caused by war with fate. In addition to becoming love’s final bastion, it is pleasant to know that both lovers died peacefully, smiling in a state of half-awareness and bliss, cooked in an instant along with everything that had been or would be. It is also pleasant to consider the molecules and atoms that once composed their Earthly bodies swirling around space, between stars and past comets, forever bonded by a pair of forces: the real heat of the solar flare that ended their lives and the true love they shared in those final moments together, made possible only by the circumstances and made special, unique, and beautiful by the same.