“Sometimes... Sometimes our hearts...crack a little.”

“Sometimes...." He paused and squeezed his eyes shut. " Sometimes our hearts.... crack a little." -Jack”

“Sometimes, when something hurts us, our hearts break a little-in a slightly ... more literal way than for humans. Our pain sort of spills out and onto anyone around us. We call it a cracked heart.”

“Jack didn't try to speak to me the following day. Or the day after.Or the day after that.But he was in Mrs. Stone's classroom, in the seat next to mine, every day for an hour after school, the only sounds coming from our pencils scratching against our papers. And the days passed like this quickly. Too quickly.I stole glances at him.Sometimes he tucked his hair behind one ear, but mostly it hung loose around his face. Sometimes he had stubble,as if he were shaving every other day.Sometimes I was sure he could feel me staring.His lip would twitch,and I'd know he was about to turn toward me,so I would hurry and look at my paper.And sometimes I would read the same sentence in the textbook over and over, and at the end of the hour, the only thing I'd learned was that Jack liked to tap his eraser on his desk when he was stumped, and when he would stretch forward,his shirt lifted,exposing a tiny bit of skin on his back.”

“It's just that even though I'm totally old and unhip,I remember what boys in high school were like.Especially the kind like Jack Caputo.""What kind is that?""The kind that doesn't even walk a girl to the door."I rolled my eyes. "Well,he would have, but he had to go drop off his other dates. There were three of us." My dad finally cracked a smile. "Good night,old man," I said,giving him a hug."Wait a sec,honey.Did I do that okay?"I pulled back. "Do what okay?" It hit me then that this was my first dance since my mom died.I felt a little guilty that I hadn't realized it before. It was just that the night was so perfect. Before he could explain, I said, "Yes.You did great.""Night,Nikki."The next morning,I found a note in my jacket pocket.I unfolded it and read two words, written in Jack's handwriting.Ever Yours.”

“We’d both been stripped of all the evasiveness, all the lies, everything we’d ever kept from each other. Layer by layer, we had given up our defenses and our excuses and our demands for whys and hows, and what was left were two broken beings. Clinging to one last shred of hope. Tethered to each other.”

“Are you okay?" I asked, distracted. I wanted back inside the vision."Nothing a little mouth-to-mouth won't cure," he said,but he couldn't muster the energy to laugh at his own joke. "You're no good for me,Nik," he said in between gasps."What do you mean?"His breathing slowed a little and he looked up at me. "I can't say no to you.”