It was just perfect, just right all at once.

I jammed my hand in my jacket pocket, bracing myself fo the next hit, and fel something. Something grainy and samll, sticking to the tips of my fingers: the sand from Commons Park. Oh Cass, I thought. I miss you so, so much.

All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.

It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.

Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.

Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.