amazingly, i'd actually forgotten that i'm supposed to be plain. i'm so used to alex telling me i'm beautiful. i'm so used to feeling beautiful around him. a hollow opens up in my chest. this is what life will be like without him: everything will become ordinary again. i'll become ordinary again.

This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss—has meant nothing.

Everytime he brushes me with his fingers, time seems to tether for a second, like it is in danger of dissolving. The whole world is dissolving, I decide, except for us. Us.

The last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler, or eat an ice-cream cone, or stick your tongue out to catch a snowflake. You just don't know.

Fred is officially the mayor of Portland now.

Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that-what we felt, what it meant- that's done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.

I close my eyes. An image flashes—emerging from the van with Julian after our escape from New York City; believing, in that moment, that we had escaped the worst, that life would begin again for us. Instead life has only grown harder.