He hadn't lost Grace. Because she'd never been his to lose in the first place.

I am a hopeless romantic. A silly, ridiculous, foolish romantic. I live in a fantasy land. I need to get real. And now, for the first time, I want to get real. I want a real relationship with a real man in the real world–-with all the real problems, faults, and whatever comes with it.

He hadn't lost Grace. Because she'd never been his to lose in the first place.

I never stopped joking around long enough to realize you weren't laughing anymore.

C'mon, you're gonna get upset sometimes. Breaking up is a shitty business. Someone always gets hurt. This time it happens to be you.

I don't understand it myself, really. It's like the idea of him is better than the him of him

Missing someone has to be one of the worst human emotions. All the other feelings like anger and fear and horror get some much more airplay, as if their intensity gives them more value, but whereas those emotions come in violent bursts and are gone again, the gnawing ache of loss has to be simply endured. It's like background noise, it's always there, it never goes away. You just have to try to block it out, distract yourself, hope that tomorrow the hole they left behind has grown a little smaller.