The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking.

It looked like an old painting, but real - everything achingly idyllic in the morning light - and I thought about how wonderfully strange it would be to live in a place where almost everything had been built by the dead.

We are now as I wished we could be then.

I needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember. Before I could begin the shameful process of forgetting the how and the why of her living and dying, I needed to learn it: How. Why. When. Where. What.

The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.

You could drive past it without noticing and from what I understand, you ought to.

He took a long drink, then grimaced. “I do not have a drinking problem,” he announced, his voice needlessly loud. “I have a Churchillian relationship with alcohol: I can crack jokes and govern England and do anything I want to do. Except not drink.