With love like that, you can't get pick about how it finds you or the details. All that matters is that it's there. Better late than never.

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together.

"Look," I said, "We knew Jason and Becky would be back, the break would end. This isn't a surprise, it's what's supposed to happen. It's what we wanted. Right?" "Is it?" he asked. "Is it what you want?" Whether he intended it to be or not, this was the final question, the last Truth. If I said what I really thought, I was opening myself up for a hurt bigger than I could even imagine. I didn't have it in me. We changed and altered so many rules, but it was this one, the only one when we'd started, that I would break. "Yes," I said.

So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.

You're not the kind of person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn every one.

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.

I've found in my own life that if my writing isn't going well, not much else will. It is the one constant, the key to everything else.