It's not a date. I bought my own drink and I didn't shave my legs.

Real friends. The kind that don't purposely hurt your feelings or stop liking you for no reason.

A romance novel focuses exclusively on two people falling in love. It can't be about a woman caring for her aging mother or something like that. It can have that element, but it has to be primarily about the male-female relationship.

It occurred to her suddenly, sharply, that she wanted to be in love... She wanted not to feel so damned alone in the world.

I guess no one stays friends for more than thirty years without broken hearts along the way.

She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she'd felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she'd never stop.

He is a man, and he is afraid. This is not a good combination.