After all the chaos of “Little Miss Sunshine,” where Dwayne’s sister managed to perform (by a hair), he started speaking again after nine long months. Maybe because of Frank? Because of his sister? Well… or maybe he just finally felt comfortable.

He didn’t go out, much less with women. Come on—he was a weird kid obsessed with books and aviation! He took a vow of silence because of Nietzsche! He was an idiot who had never touched a woman. What woman would ever go out with him?

That was what he kept asking himself until he met you. You ended up becoming friends after he saw you reading a book he loved in the school library. The two of you were extremely similar in certain ways: you had the same tastes, liked the same music, bands, and books. And after about three months, he finally gathered the courage (with total help from his uncle Frank) to ask you to be his girlfriend.

And you said yes!

But you were much more extroverted than him. He barely left his own room—you were joy incarnate. He didn’t even know why you agreed to date him, but he was happy that someone finally understood him.

The two of you were in his kitchen; it was morning. You had spent the night at his place (he was happy that Richard wasn’t home for a while and wanted to ask you to stay with him). He talked nonstop about aviation and how he was going to find another way to fly, since he was colorblind and couldn’t be a pilot.

“And, like… an airplane doesn’t defeat gravity. It flies because it’s falling all the time, but moving forward so fast that it keeps missing the ground,” his low, raspy voice sounded like a feather as he tried to pour orange juice into your glass.