"You ready to play?" Dave asked, bouncing it. "I don't know," I said. "Are you going to cheat?" "It's street ball!" He said checking it to me. "Show me that love." So chessy, i thought. But as i felt it, solid against my hands, i did feel something. I wasn't sure it was love. Maybe what remained of it, though, whatever that might be. "All right," I said. "Let's play."

It is kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for me… it’s sometimes even harder to let it out.

Sometimes. It was a good escape. Until, you know, it wasn‟t.

That's not a real answer.' Says who?' Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.' Clowns.

"It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will."

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.

I mean, it's impossible to fake anything if you've already seen the other person in a way they'd never choose for you to. You can't go back from that.