Sometimes the picture someone else paints of us is a more accurate portrayal than a reflection. What we see in the mirror is always reversed. A portrait not only allows us to see our own faces, but how it looks to others.

We look at each other without saying anything, both of us smiling like idiots. I heart is so full I can’t believe it can possibly still beat without bursting right in front of me. My desire for him is so fierce I’m afraid to stand, because I know my knees will be too weak to hold me up, but there’s more than that. This great and bursting thing inside me is love.

If you want to know how someone really feels, you almost never have to ask.

There seemed to be so much to say, but no words adequate to say it.

Sometimes,” Joe said after a bit, “it’s just easier to keep being what everyone expects you to be. Even if that’s what you’re not, anymore.

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 know everything and nothing about him all at the same time.