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.

From the first time you laughed with me, all those months, and all those stories,” Joe said quietly. “They were all you, to me. All of them were you.

I waited for a long time and there was nothing but the pain of wanting something I couldn't seem to find.

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

A good sister is one who won't be embarrassed when you burst into tears in public. A better one will hand you tissues until you stop. The best is the one who will go get you another latte to go with the ginormous chocolate orgy she's already laid in front of you.

If I'd known it was going to be the last time he'd ever hold me, I'd have paid better attention.

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.