I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.

So while it seemed like you were seeing everything, you really weren't. Just bits and pieces that looked like a whole.

“Well," Isaid finally, knowing he was waiting, “you make me laugh.” He nodded. “And?” “You're pretty good-looking." ""Pretty good-looking? I called you beautiful." "You want to be beautiful?" I asked him. "Are you saying I'm not?"

"It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will."

I am never happy when I finish a book. I always start feeling good, and then I get to about Page 75 and start losing momentum - and I kind of pull it together at the end, but by then I think it's just all over. It's become almost a running joke among my agent and my editor - I always say that, so they don't take me seriously anymore.

Everything always gets crazy at the end. You just have to keep going, regardless of how awful it gets. So that's what I do.

Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing.