No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater.

I was just stock in the middle, vague and undefined.

Lissa lowered her voice and added, "I might not even go to school anyway. I might defer and join the Peace Corps and go to Africa and shave my head and dig latrines." "Shave your head?" I said, because, really, this was the most ludicrous part of the whole thing. "You? Do you have any idea how ugly most people's bare heads are? They've got all kinds of bumps, Lissa. And you won't know until it's too late and you're flat-out bald.

Oh for God's sake,' Heather said, 'I wish you two would just go out, fail miserably as a couple, and get it over with.

Honesty in principle was one thing. In someone’s face, it was another.

This was our common ground, the secret we shared but never spoke aloud.

If you were dead," Owen told her, "you'd have bigger problems than what you were wearing.