“Are there any other kinds of mallow besides marsh,” he asked between bites of his PBJ ?

Sabrina just chuckled. He’d gotten a glob of goober on his upper lip from the sandwich. Again.

“Here,” she said, wiping a smidgen of the stain away and handing him the remains of the napkin. “Clean yourself up and get your head out of the clouds.”

“Fluffy, billowy, pillows of marshmallow clouds,” he grinned. Heaven help her there was jelly slathered over his bicuspids.

“The most you’ve said to me in weeks and it’s your magnum opus on mallow?” She had turned away while asking the question, wiping coffee from Formica, not meaning menace. Not too much anyway.

Only now as she turned back he was sobbing. Big, shoulder-shaking shrugs of tears and wailing. Reverse laughter: giant guffaws of grief, ground from his guts.

He inhaled calmly like an Olympic swimmer and not like a drowning man.

“I just don’t know how to tell you I love you anymore,” he said through fishbowl eyes. “How to tell you I love you and that it’s over.”