You wouldn't match Melanie and me up, and if we hadn't gotten stuck together as lab partners in junior high science, I doubt if we'd have matched us up either. I'm not sure why we even stuck, except that we each probably find the other to be entertaining...Besides I feel like it was a personal mission of mine to broaden Melanie's world, though I think she felt the same for me.

We should have the right to have someone leave when we want, to only allow those in who we want in. But the truth is, people can force their way into your life whenever they choose. If they want to remind you forevermore that they exist, they will. They can reappear in a card or call or a "chance" meeting, they can remember your birthday or the day you met with some innocuous small note. No matter how little they matter in your new life, they can insist on being seen and recognized and remembered.

My father said that love at first sight should send you running, if you know what's good for you. It's your dark pieces having instant recognition with their dark pieces, he says. You're an idiot if you think it means you've met your soul mate. So I was an idiot.

I thought I might cry, the way you do when someone gives you some kindness when you most need it but when it seems the most surprising thing.

I don’t know why we insist on pain when pain is so often easy to eliminate. It’s funny the ways we try to punish ourselves when we feel we’ve committed some crime.

And if you could make a choice, then why not pick happiness?

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.