If you're lucky, the friends you make when you're sixteen stay with you for the rest of your life. If you're smart, you know when it's time to let them go.

I knew him, but I don't understand him.

But the problem with looking back when you should be walking ahead is that you usually end up walking into something that hurts.

There is so much freedom in not having to choose.

I was trying to replace something I'd come to care about very much with something pretending to be as important.

What are you, Elle? Are you a ghost? Are you an angel or a demon? Because you can’t be real.

He hadn’t been her first lover or the first boy to give her an orgasm. He hadn’t even been the first she’d loved. He’d been the first to turn her inside out with something as simple as a smile. The first to make her doubt herself. He’d taken her deeper than anyone ever had, and yet she hadn’t drowned.