My agent is so totally honest, which is just what every writer needs. She won't let me sell a crappy book, even if I want to.

But as was so often the case, it was the one person missing who you thought about more than the ones who were right in front of you.

And guys don't get attached, guys don't give themselves over completely, and guys lie. That's why they should be handled with great trepidation, not trusted, and held at arm's length whenever possible.

Silence is so freaking loud

But those words were only the middle of the story. There was a beginning here, too.

So," she went on, "it got me thinking about what cost beauty. Or for that matter, what cost anything? Would you trade love for beauty? Or happiness for beauty? Could a gorgeous person with a mean streak be a worthy trade? And if you did make the trade, decide you'd take that beautiful swan and hope it wouldn't turn on you, what would you do if it did?

We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for a while. Maybe even forever. That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.