She falls in love hard and fast.

Some of these loves are romantic, but they don't have to be. She doesn't see it that way; being in love is just a level of intensity that fits all different shapes of love. A person, a place, an idea. She falls in love constantly, every day, all or nothing in her mind, the grand futures she plans for the things she becomes invested in. She falls in love over and over, with friends, lovers, songs, books, cities, stages. But it's the romantic ones that break her, of course. Over the years she becomes worn, insecure. She stops trusting her judgment, she can't stand uncertainty. She waits for things to go wrong before there's any sign that they will. She becomes the destruction she fears, a self fulfilling prophecy. She questions motives, she's weighted by loneliness but doesn't settle for just anything. These flaws are created and nurtured over time, but she doesn't learn her lesson. She keeps falling in love.

So she falls in love with Manhattan.

The first time she set foot on the island, wide eyed and inexperienced, it felt like a scene in a movie, a fast-paced montage of billboards and taxis full of visual and emotional cliches. She gets yelled at several times on the first day she's there, once accompanying a shove from someone who's moving faster than she ever has in her life, inconvenienced by her rookie mistake of standing on the sidewalk and gazing upward in admiration. Her mother is offended and annoyed, she's not a stranger to the city and she's never found the charm. But Ione's fallen victim. She pictures the impatient man as the White Rabbit and he's late for a very important date, and she feels as though she's stumbled upon a much dirtier, grittier, brazen and unapologetic Wonderland, one that welcomes as much as it warns away. She's there on business, but it's the city itself that makes her feel like she's living someone else's life. She needn't drink to shrink or swim through a sea of her own tears to find her way. She's already found it.

Mostly. It takes her nearly a decade to move there.

It's his city by then, really. She's spent enough time there without owning property to have memories in one too many of its nooks and crannies, baggage now bursting from its crevices. She's reminded of him on city streets that shouldn't belong to anyone but they belong to him, a mental burden everywhere she goes. She makes mistakes in her pursuit of rebirth, in washing away the emotional scars that are more like mental artillery constantly posing a threat. She won't let weapons win the war, she tells herself. She buys an apartment, she settles in for the battle, not very strong and riddled with doubts.

And then she meets her.

Their first conversation is like talking to an old friend, one who already knows the way your mind operates and the history that influenced it, some kind of inexplicable understanding that would be attributed to knowing each other in past lives if you believed in that sort of thing. Ione doesn't, necessarily, though the concept is beautiful and easy to romanticize, but the way this feels new and old at the same time makes her wonder. It's an impossible thing; she's somehow the key to Ione's past and the door to her future all at once. She shows Ione a new New York, one that isn't easily categorized, not a wonderland of promise or a burden of personal history. It's just a place where she can exist. It's hopeful but honest, and she appreciates that. They're both a little broken, battle worn and starting anew with the weight of experience on their backs. They're the right people at the right time in one another's lives.

So they repave the city with their new starts, partners in proverbial crime. They get closer still, more in tune with one another with every day that passes. It's the kind of love she can only feel for someone who holds her hair back when she's sick, who stops her from sending that text message she's going to regret, who continues to tell her that she deserves better when she feels like she doesn't. Ione jumps out of a plane for her, quite literally, and she would do it again if she asked. The generosity goes both ways; she spends more time on transatlantic flights for Ione than anyone ever has outside of contractual obligations, because their bond now extends beyond the borders of New York. Because that's their city, but what she has with her exists now in her veins. Then, when Ione is in Dublin feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders, she alleviates it with the simple statement of "I'm on my way to you."

Ione falls in love over and over, with friends, lovers, songs, books, cities, stages. Some of these loves will break her, but this particular love will keep putting her back together.