If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I am going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent. Would you prefer me to read from Daphne's Three Tender Months with Harold or Cindy and John's House of Everlasting Love? I guarantee, your sanity and your indie street cred won't last a chapter. And they are very, very short chapters." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.

I say good-bye to hope, but I also say good-bye to hope's disappointment.

It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer.

Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.

I can take everything on her face at face value, and that's valuable in a friend.

There is no reason that we should ever be ashamed of our bodies or ashamed of our love.

When is a night over? Is it the start of sunrise or the end of it? Is it when you finally go to sleep or simply realize that you have to? When the club closes or when you everyone leaves? "It's over when you decide it's over," she says. "When you call it a night. The rest is just a matter of where the sun is in the sky.