I'd been running for years: there was nothing scarier, to me, than to just be still with someone. And yet, there on that dark road, going home, I was.

He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I'd been all along. I'd just hidden her well.

I was just stock in the middle, vague and undefined.

I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come easy for, someone like me.

This is personal, she'd said. Real. This moment was too, even if you couldn't see it at first glance. It was fake on the outside, but so true within. You only had to look, really look to tell.

I took his wildness from him and tried to fold it into myself, filling up the empty spaces all those second place finishes left behind.

Maybe" she said. "I just wish we'd have a little mishap.It would be reassuring