Katja Millay

“Just because I don't talk about it, doesn't mean I forget.”

“You have no reason to trust me.' 'No, but I trust you anyway.”

“I love you, Sunshine, and I don't give a shit whether you want me to or not.”

“It amazes me how people are so afraid of what can happen in the dark, but they don't give a second thought about their safety during the day; as if the sun offers some sort of ultimate protection from all the evil in the world. It doesn't.”

“I live in a world without magic or miracles. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shapeshifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. A place where people die and music disintegrates and things suck.”

“You know I meant it. I am human. And male. And not remotely blind. Do you want me to say it again? You are distractingly, even if-that-is-not-a-real-word pretty. You are so pretty that I bullied Clay Whitaker into drawing me a picture of you so I could look at you when you aren't around. You are so pretty that one of these days I'm going to lose a finger in my garage because I can't concentrate with you so close to me. You are so pretty that I wish you weren't so I wouldn't want to hit every guy at school who looks at you, especially my best friend.”

“And as much as I'm telling her to stay here, I still want her to choose to come with me. To say fuck sanity and healing and closure. To say that I am the only thing she needs to be well and whole and alive. But we both know that's not true.”

“Emilia," he says, and when he does, it warms me to my soul. "Every day you save me.”

“And maybe I'm a liar and I do need it, because being kissed by Josh Bennet is kind of like being saved. It's a promise and a memory of the future and a book of better stories.”

“There are so many things that can break you if there's nothing to hold you together.”

“I don't know if I'm okay. It shouldn't be possible to be this close to another person. To let them crawl inside you.”

“He's kissing me. And when he does, part of me is lost. But it's the part that's twisted and mangled and wrong, and for just that moment, with his hands in my hair and his lips on my mouth, I can pretend that it never existed.”

“True story.”

“We're like mysteries to one another. Maybe if I can solve him and he can solve me, we can explain each other. Maybe that's what I need. Someone to explain me.”

“It's a little bit devastating being surrounded by people who can do what you can't anymore. People who create. People whose souls don't live in their bodies anymore because they've leached so much of themselves into their work.”

“I am pressed so hard against the earth by the weight of reality that some days I wonder how I am still able to lift my feet to walk.”

“Girls always want to change the rules in the middle of the game.”

“You get halfway through with your life and you realize you haven't done the things you wanted to do or become what you'd thought you'd become and it's disheartening.”

“I'd also believe that all teenage boys go around calling girls baby, because apparently that's the express train to romance.”

“Sometimes it's easier to pretend nothing is wrong than to face the fact that everything is wrong, but you're powerless to do anything about it.”

“The world should be full of Josh Bennetts. But it’s not. I had the only one. And I threw him away.”

“Nothing else matters. If I had a penny right now I'd wish that were true; I want to believe it more than I've ever wanted to believe anything.”

“A few minutes later, she comes out of my bedroom wearing one of my t-shirts, and it might almost be worse than seeing her in no shirt at all.”

“I'm not sure how long we sit in Josh's truck, holding hands, surrounded by darkness and unspoken regrets. But it's long enough to know that there are no stories or secrets in the world worth holding onto more than his hand.”

“I think you and I both know it’s Josh who needs saving. Have a good time tonight.”

“What about Josh?” I think there’s more to that question than she’s letting on but she’s testing the waters. Salvation, I write. She looks at the word and nods. And for a minute she looks as sad as I feel. “That fits, I think.”

“I wished my mother was here tonight, which is stupid, because it’s an impossible wish.” He shrugs and turns to me, drowning the smile that cracks me every time. “It’s not stupid to want to see her again.” “It wasn’t so much that I wanted to see her again,” he says, looking at me with the depth of more than seventeen years in his eyes. “I wanted her to see you.”

“What’d you wish?” “I can’t tell you that!” I say indignantly. “Why not?” “Because it won’t come true.” Do I really need to say this? I’m pretty sure it’s a given in wish situations.“Bullshit.” “It’s the rule,” I insist. “It’s only the rule with birthday cakes and shooting stars, not pennies in fountains.”

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

“I reach up to brush my hair back out of my eyes so I can look around and attempt to determine what the hell is going on. The only three things that I know for certain took place last night are that one -- small elves climbed up my body and tied my hair into a mass of tiny knots, two -- I must have slept with my mouth open because something crawled into it and died and three -- I was sucked through a vortex into some animated world where an anvil was dropped on my head.”

“His hands are miracles. I can watch them for hours, transforming wood into something it never dreamed of being.”

“My mother's hope is a weapon.”

“Daylight won’t protect you from anything. Bad things happen all the time; they don’t wait until after dinner”

“Wonderful. Last night's dinner, the charred remains of my dignity, and apparently, now, my undergarments, too. What else did I leave on Josh Bennett's bathroom floor?”

“People who go around advertising their birthdays are douchebags. It's a fact. You can look it up on Wikipedia.”

“People like to say love is unconditional, but it's not, and even if it was unconditional, it's still never free. There's always an expectation attached. They always want something in return. Like they want you to be happy or whatever and that makes you automatically responsible for their happiness because they won't be happy unless you are ... I just don't want that responsibility.”

“Do real boys actually call girls baby? I don't have enough experience to know. I do know that if a guy ever called me baby, I'd probably laugh in his face. Or choke him.”

“I'd watch her, amazed at just how much a person could accomplish fueled by tea and regret.”

“I decline the coffee. I don't drink it, because no matter how much sugar I put into it, it still tastes like ass-water to me. Maybe it's because my taste buds are so desensitized to sweet that anything not comprised of at least ninety percent sugar tastes wrong”

“My phone is on my bed, whispering in my ear like a bottle of scotch to a recovering alcoholic, while the rain continues cackling at me through my window.”

“I doubt taking in a sullen, bitter, teenage girl with more issues than National Geographic is at the center of the vision board for a single woman in her early thirties.”

“Good morning, Sunshine!' Josh Fucking Bennett. By now, I'm pretty sure that if I was to find his birth certificate, that is exactly what it would say.”

“I’d trade my hand all over again to take back everything I did and hear him call me Sunshine.”

“there are no stories or secrets in the world worth holding onto more than his hand.”

“And if I want to leave here without regrets, I need to know there are no more unsaid words left to haunt me. --Josh”

“I need to know that there even is such a thing as okay, or maybe not just okay, maybe even good, and it's out there and we just haven't found it yet. There's got to be a happier ending than this, here. There's got to be a better story. Because we deserve one. You deserve one. Even if it doesn't end with you coming back to me. --Josh”

“You can't change the rules and think everyone else is just going to keep playing.”

“Because it's good when you find one that does mean something. Makes all the empty ones worthwhile.”

“You can put a name on anything, call it whatever you want, doesn't make it real. Doesn't make it true.”

“Maybe nobody knows how. Sometimes it's easier to pretend nothing is wrong than to face the fact that everything is wrong, but you're powerless to do anything about it.”