Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.

Her grandmother used to tell her that a pink sky meant someone in the distance had just fallen in love . . . .

She'd always known he didn't love her. But it was easier to bear when he didn't know she loved him. That way they were even. Now he knew he had all the power.

Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails.

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

Sometimes people who had been together for a long time got to imagining that things used to be better, even when they weren't.

She knew what it felt like to stand in front of someone and ask them to love you, to try to pull them to you by the sheer force of your desire, a force so strong it felt as though you were going to die from it.