“They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.”

“We had lain together, skin on skin, been as close as two people could, and he was a stranger. He was that someone who you are afraid of as a child, stranger. They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.”

“You knew me. You KNOW me. I can't imagine my life without you, without someone who knows me that well.”

“I thought I might cry, the way you do when someone gives you some kindness when you most need it but when it seems the most surprising thing.”

“The hope was, people like me got to finally find our place in college or in the actual world. People who understood this told you that high school wasn't the actual world, that it was more like a temporary alternate reality you were forced to believe in for four years. A video game you played, where you could never get to the next level no matter how hard you tried.”

“A lady I will be, but a man's accessory, his handbag, no thank you. I will not be someone's ornament. I will not just be someone's honey, baby, sweetheart.”

“It was all the things you could never understand and could never possess that made you ache.”