It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.

Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.

But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing nothing.

To think, after all this time, after all the searching and all the waiting, after all the regret and the time she'd spent away, she came back to find that happiness was right where she's left it. On a football field in Mullaby, North Carolina. Waiting for her.

We have history, you and I. You just don’t know it yet.

Your peers when you're a teenager will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.

You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.