“Maybe if I'd been braver in that moment, I would have cried.”

“Maybe I would have been something you'd be good at. Maybe you would have been something I'd be good at.”

“I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.”

“For a moment he thought she was about to hit him, which would have been bad, or even start crying, which would have been much, much worse.”

“It will never be true. Things have never been okay with us. Maybe if I'd paid attention, I would have seen that on our first few dates. Maybe I would have noticed his possessiveness; maybe I would have seen the way he wrapped around me, made me his entire world, his obsession. Maybe I would have felt the wight he placed on my shoulders, one tiny stone at a time.”

“For a moment, I wondered how different my life would have been had they been my parents, but I shook the thought away. I knew my father had done the best he could, and I had no regrets about the way I'd turned out. Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination. Because however it had happened, I'd somehow ended up eating shrimp in a dingy downtown shack with a girl that I already knew I'd never forget.”