I think love is huge, overwhelming. I think it's terrible and beautiful.

I love the me I am with him. I’m the girl who has Dave. I’m Lauren, Dave’s girlfriend. I’m someone better than Lauren Smith, who no one noticed till Dave came along. The thing is, that girl isn’t me and I know it. But when I’m with him, I feel like I could be her. That if something in me was just–I don’t know, shifted a little or something, smoothed down–people would think of me the way they think of Dave, and everything would always be perfect. I would be perfect.

What had been became what was and a story only works when you know the ending. When the people in it don’t seem like pretend. When you can think about that girl and how she was once upon a time, and see her. When you don’t already know the story is a lie.

I think the way I feel when I look at Evan comes from her. In pictures taken the day she married my dad, she was reckless, laughing, spinning around in circles. She looked like her whole world was him. She looked a kind of happy I can't even imagine. I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. I don' want to feel the way she did because I know what happens when you do. You love with your whole heart, with everything, and you wake up one morning and kiss someone good-bye the way you always do except you mean it as good-bye forever.

The sun will rise tomorrow. It always does, and all the wishing in the world for the way things were, or for what they could have been, won't change that. It won't change how things are.

That's you, right?' he asks me. 'Yeah.' 'Cute. Not that I, uh, think little kids are cute. Just that you were cute. I mean, you can see how you turned out to be so...oh.

My father looked like he was having a stroke— not that Mel seemed to notice because he just kept talking. “Patrick needs a ride. No car, you know, and so I figured, hey, I can pick up some gas money.” He laughed. No one else did, and now Patrick looked like he was trying to push himself inside the door and hide.