“Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away as she could, and then watching to see what would happen next, what would roll back to her, what would have gotten left behind.”

“She prunes the idea away like a faded rose blossom, and quickly discards it as if the thorns might puncture her resolve.”

“Sarah wonders if whatever secrets Grace is protecting feel the same as her own, sometimes just fuzzy and ticklish, like a littler of kittens trying to climb and paw their way out, and sometimes with claws bared, kittens grown to tigers, camouflaged but always ready to spring.”

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

“God forbid, if something happened & she lost him for good, she would give up anything to have him back. Anything & everything.”

“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.”

“When he held her that way, she felt so happy that it disturbed her. After he left, it would take her hours to fall asleep, and then when she woke up she would feel another onrush of agitated happiness, which was a lot like panic. She wished she could grab the happiness and mash it into a ball and hoard it and gloat over it, but she couldn't. It just ran around all over the place, disrupting everything.”