I’ve always sort of preferred people who are not entirely likable.

Gus: "It tastes like..." Me: "Food." Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately...?" Me: "It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down around your canal-side dinner table." Gus: "Nicely phrased." Gus's father: "Our children are weird." My dad: "Nicely phrased."

Dumpers may not always be the heartbreakers, and the Dumpees may not always be the heartbroken. But everyone has a tendency.

But a lot of times, people die how they live. And so last words tell me a lot about who people were, and why they became the sort of people biographies get written about.

Grief doesn't change you. It reveals you.

Even with everything broken and decided inside her she couldn't quite allow herself to disappear for good.

At some point, I realized I was Kaitlyning the encounter, so I decided to text Kaitlyn and ask for some advice.