Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.

In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.

It takes so little to change everything. If you really thought about it, it would scare you to death.

Nothing like being scolded by a hippie.

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

And no relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater.

Yes, it sucked getting dumped. But wasn't it better to just be brutally honest? To admit that your feeling for someone is never going to be powerful enough to justify taking up any more of their time? I was doing him a favor, really. Freeing him up for a better opportunity. In fact, I was a practically a saint, if you really thought about it. Exactly.