It's always very pure, that last moment before an ugly, unsettling truth hits someone. The most stark of before-and-afters.

I was woundering what he would say, what word could sum me up right then, when i saw the lights come across his face, blaringly yellow, and suddenly he was brighter, and brighter, and i asked him what was happening, what was wrong. I remember only that light, so strong it spilled across my shoulders, and lit up his face, and how scared he looked as something big and loud hit my door, sending glass shattering across me, little sparks catching the light like diamonds, as they fell, with me, into the dark.

Yes, it sucked getting dumped. But wasn't it better to just be brutally honest? To admit that your feeling for someone is never going to be powerful enough to justify taking up any more of their time? I was doing him a favor, really. Freeing him up for a better opportunity. In fact, I was a practically a saint, if you really thought about it. Exactly.

I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him.

for once, you believed in yourself. you believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.

I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.

I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented.