It was not enough to be the last guy she kissed. I wanted to be the last one she loved. And I knew I wasn’t. I knew it, and I hated her for it. I hated her for not caring about me. I hated her for leaving that night, and I hated myself , too, not only because I let her go but because if I had been enough for her, she wouldn’t have even wanted to leave. She would have just lain with me and talked and cried, and I would have listened and kissed at her tears as they pooled in her eyes.

I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially-fraught free throws.

I'm not interested in dating a girl I'm not gonna marry

Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.

I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.

That was part of her, and you used to know it. It's like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.

The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.