We're as good at talking ourselves out of fear as into it, aren't we? Maybe better.

A new person in your life gives the rest of you a chance to be new, too. Your life can be whatever you want it to, from there on out. I leaned in and kissed and that is who I was to him, not shy, but bold. Not inhibited, but brave. I was that to him and so I kept being that. It was what I thought he wanted and what he was attracted to, and yet it was this, this exact thing I wasn't even really, that made him the most insecure.

The romantic element is what the story Essential Maps for the Lost, sort of sits on, but all the stuff below the surface is really about family. It's about the baggage we bring, both the good and the hard stuff in that baggage. It's more about the other relationships. It's about mothers and fathers and sisters and dogs, all of the pieces. It's really more about - yes, love, in its widest usage.

You look so good," I say, and s***! Oh god, that's not what I meant. S***! "It looks good. The book.

I didn't walk over and talk to him, though, not then. If I needed the time for a tree branch to become just a tree branch again and the wind to become just the wind, then a boy, most of all, needed some time to be only a boy.

I felt a constant, low-flying desperation, the kind you feel when you are trying, trying, trying to get something you will never, ever get.

I may be nervous," I say. "Okay, I'm really glad you said that, because I just went to the back room to put on more deodorant." Sebastian says.