Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.

I love her. I need her. I gave away everything I had for her. I just wanted her to know me.

Let me love you, but don't love me back. Do love me and let me hate you for a while. Let me feel like I have some control, because I know I never do.

She had never had a boy talk to her like that. There was no cover of bullshit, no flirtation, no added charm, but his look was searing. He was different from anyone she had known.

There are going to be moments of deep, deep doubts, and you have to have faith that your initial idea was good and just muddle through.

It wasn't just that Lucy wanted to help him. She wasn't as selfless as that. She was madly attracted to him. She was attracted to all of the normal things and the weird things, too, like the back of his neck and his thumbs on the edge of his desk and the way his hair stuck out on one side like a little wing over his ear. She caught his smell once, and it made her dizzy. She couldn't fall asleep that night.

How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?" Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. "That's what you're doing anyway, my dear.