This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.

Being a star requires risk-taking shoes.

Then I'd crawl back into bed, smelling her all around me, and tell myself that next time, I would lock that window. But I never did.

Because you have to just go with the flow. Your life is not your own, with people coming in and out all the time. You get mellow because you have to.

She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I'd spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.

Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible

What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn't even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.