He didn't think he belonged here, so she was making him face some uncomfortable facts. People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.

She sometimes thought she was going crazy. Her first thought when she woke up was always how to get him out of her thoughts. And she would keep watch, hoping to see him next door, while plotting ways to never have to see him again.

all we have is our deep and abiding love for each other. We can't loose that or we loose ourselves. If we don't help each other, who will?

Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.

Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. . . . This, her father would say, was called being an adult.

Magic is what we invent when we want something we think we cant have.

She'd assumed she'd be married and have kids by this age, that she would be grooming her own daughter for this, as her friends were doing. She wanted it so much she would dream about it sometimes, and then she would wake up with the skin at her wrists and neck red from the scratchy lace of the wedding gown she'd dreamed of wearing. But she'd never felt anything for the men she'd dated, nothing beyond her own desperation. And her desire to marry wasn't strong enough, would never be strong enough, to allow her to marry a man she didn't love.