What I meant was, you looked happier in the pictures.

That's when you really lose people, you know.When the pain passes.

It's the time of the night I like best, when most people are asleep and it feels like the world belongs completely to my friends and me, as though nothing exists apart from out little circle: everywhere else is darkness and quiet.

Sometimes I think maybe they were right all along, the people on the other side in Zombieland. Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose either. If we didn't get our hearts stomped on, shattered: if we didn't have to patch and repatch until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together and bound up by who knows what. If we could just float along, like snow. But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer - big explosions of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey - pick the snow?

I didn’t know it would be like this,” he says in a whisper. And then: “I’m scared.

A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the steam of its rose like a broken butterfly wing.

He looked at me like I was beautiful.