Shame

Before he met the woman who lived next door, the narrator carried urges he couldn't name or square with himself. Ana, as he describes her, is lovely, sweet, kind, and yielding. She became his closest friend first, and then something much more.

When they were together, he felt calm for the first time in his life, and that calm helped carry him through to college. Their mutual craving for both pleasure and pain eventually pulled them apart, and he spent long nights drinking to dull the ache of her absence. Desire, revulsion, shame, and control run through the story.

Now close to finishing his degree, he sees Ana return, her blue-gray eyes as perceptive as ever. He treats her reappearance as a final opportunity to free himself from his shame, though he suspects it won't be simple.