He gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips – it means nothing or everything. After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me. Jack says, ‘That was the guy?’ ‘That was him.’ Jake shakes his head. ‘What?’ ‘He’s not for you,’ he says. I say, ‘How do you know?’ but what I mean is, How do you know? ‘He’s like Ashley Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Any one of these guys is Rhett-ier than he is.’ Again, I ask my benignly inflected, ‘How do you know?’ ‘How do I know?’ he says, tackling me into a bear hug. ‘How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.

Basically, all anyone has to do is ask me for fun details or tell me to be creative, and my mind turns to mud. I am instantly the most boring person you've ever met.

He said, "People wait their whole lives for the kind of happiness we have.

He tells me that the best man I will ever find will be attracted to other women. I hear this as another fact I am too old not to know. More proof of how unprepared I am to love anyone.

Up until that moment, I'd been at the earliest stage of love, when you feel it will turn you into the better person you want to be. Now, his gentle voice and sage advice took me to a later stage: I felt I needed to pretend to be a better person than I was so he'd keep loving me. This was hard because it made me hate him.

Time. There seems to be vast quantities of the stuff spooling around me in all directions, everywhere i look. Days and hours. Weeks and minutes. Years. The hard part, ive discovered, is filling it.

I hate weddings,' she says. 'They make me feel so unmarried. Actually, even brushing my teeth makes me feel unmarried.