This is what happens when nice people are pushed too far. We give too many chances, and so when we've finally had enough, we are well and truly done. When a nice person shuts a door on you, it's shut for good.

Fear was the biggest bullshitter, he’d said. But sometimes, too, fear told the truth.

I put the guitar back in the case. I can't even look at it anymore. Instead, I want to make brownies. I want an end result there's a recipe for. I want to combine eggs and water and oil and chocolate and flour and sugar and vanilla and get something fulfilling.

We had lain together, skin on skin, been as close as two people could, and he was a stranger. He was that someone who you are afraid of as a child, stranger. They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.

It was all the things you could never understand and could never possess that made you ache.

Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.

I could forget that part, but it had to have been true.