When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall.

But I always worked harder when I was up against something, or when someone assumed I couldn't succeed. That's what drove me, all those nights studying. The fact that so many figured I couldn't do it.

You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.

I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say.

Morgan sighed. "I," she announced, "am so pathetic." "You are not," I said. "I am." She went over and straightened the cling wrap, corner to corner. "Do you know how many times I've brought in devilled eggs? This is, like, the only time I haven't been sobbing and that's only 'cause I cried all night. And Norman," she said, her voice rising to a wail, "sweet Norman, always just acts so surprised to see the eggs, and pleased, and he never, once, has ever acted like he knew what they meant."

She took the sun when it came and the rain the same way.

Because' I repeated, as a breeze blew over us, "sometimes things just happen. That aren't expected. Or on the list." "Such as?" he asked "I don't know," I said, frustrated. "That's the point. It would be out of the blue, taking us by surprise. Something we might not be prepared for." "But we will be prepared," he said, confused. "We'll have the list.