He was half again my size, but when we embraced, I felt like I was holding him up, and it was all I could do to remain standing. He buried his face in my hair, his body shaking against me with the spasmodic rhythm of unrestrained sobs. It was almost more than I could bear gracefully.

There were a million What Ifs that could have stopped the whole thing. A million things I wished I'd done differently. But in the end, I was left with what actually happened. With my mistakes and his.

My aunt and overprivileged cousin only recognize two states of being: glitter and grunge. And if you weren’t glitter, well, that only left one other option.

It's suspiciously quiet in here, and there's a Tod shaped dent in the bean bag. For the sake of both my sanity and my temper, I'm going to pretend I can't tell that you're in his lap, so could you pretend that this is still my house and you are still my daughter, and I'm within my parental rights to kick your boyfriend out after 11:00 p.m.?

So could we please not mob the three-thousand-plus-year-old reaper like tweens at a boy-band concert?

Marc didn’t want to win by default. He wanted to win for real. Forever.

Even before the withdrawal sets in, you'll do anything to get that feeling back, because as long as it lasts, nothing's wrong. It doesn't matter if you forget something, or lose something. Or if you fail someone. Nothing's wrong and everything feels good, and you never want it to end.