Everything was quiet, a strange sort of quiet that felt like an unfinished sentence.

Some people don't know how to fall in love, like not knowing how to swim. They panic first when they jump in. Then they figure it out.

How could someone with a life this full feel this empty?

Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.

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.

I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn't home that I started to believe it," she said carefully. "Belonging has always been tough for me." I can be your home," he said quietly. "Belong to me.

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