I didn’t fall in love with James. Falling sounds like an accident. Falling hurts. I’d fallen in love with Michael, fallen hard like slipping off a cliff and hitting the rocks below. Falling in love was something I’d vowed never to do again. I chose to love James.

We were broken, brittle and fragile. The question was, were we still precious to each other? Or, instead of everything falling into place, had it fallen into pieces?

Choices. We all make them, sometimes more than once. Sometimes it's the choices we make over and over that define us, but more often it's the choices we don't make.

He was quiet. I said nothing, hoping that maybe, for once, he'd stop pretenting he was okay. Then I could, too. That we could both forget the roles that had so long bound us.

Good things, by their nature, are fleeting. It’s those that bring us grief that linger.

There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.

Sometimes,” he said after a second that lasted a million years, “things get broken. And they can’t be fixed.