You don't have to make things harder then they have to be just to prove a point.

I'd chosen instead to just change my route, go miles out of the way, as if avoiding it would make it go away once and for all.

If nothing else, now we knew where to find each other, even if only time would tell if either of us would ever come looking.

It's the same thing,' I told her. 'What is?' 'Being afraid and being alive.' 'No,' she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn't understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. 'Macy, no. It's not.

Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.

My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.

I took in a breath. "What's the one thing you'd do," I asked. "if you could do anything?" Pass," he said. For a second I was sure I'd heard wrong. "What?" He cleared his throat. "I said, I pass." Why?" He turned his head and looked at me. "Because." Because why?" Because I just do.