“I was here, & now, but I was also swimming in the past, living these same motions we'd made so many times before.”

“That's when I realized that part of me would probably always be lost in the past. That just seemed to be my personality: I was the one who couldn't stand change.”

“I wanted to tell him I loved him, that I'd always loved him, & that life-& I- had never been the same without him there.”

“She would forever remember how warm & secure he made her feel. How could she ever live without that?”

“And I could go the rest of my life like this, don't get me wrong. This was reality and I'd certainly learned to adapt to that reality. I didn't love it, I'd never love it, but I lived with it pretty well.”

“She thought about Cheryl’s contention that this was young love, and about how she’d feel if they were ever to break up and she had to look back on this moment as an episode in a life that was full of people she didn’t even know now. The thought made her want to cry.”

“How different would I be, if I'd never met him? Might I have had a normal dating life like my friends did, flitting from one guy to the next, never getting too serious or too invested in one while I was still so young? Who would I be if I hadn't endured the heartbreak of losing him & losing that part of myself that was built around him?”