There is so much freedom in not having to choose.

When you find someone who makes you smile and laugh, when you find someone who makes you feel safe…you shouldn’t let that person go just because you’re afraid.

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.

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.

The past doesn't change no matter how much time you spend thinking about it. Good and bad all add up to the whole. Take away one piece, no matter how small, and the whole changes. Whether it's optimism, pessimism or fatalism, I don't spend my time wishing for the past to be different so present would be different, too. I control my future with what I choose now.

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

We labored under the pretense that nothing had changed when everything had, and I understood him, but i no longer knew him.