“I'd address his way of trying to discourage Ian later. After all, he could have come up with something other than saying I was a whiny, smelly, trumpet-snoring bad lay.”

“Have I come at a bad time?" she managed to say without guffawing. I believe I said something on the order of "argh," and compounded my embarrassment by trying to cover myself with the sweatpants I'd picked up off the floor. ”

“Ian stood above me, his chest heaving with exertion and fury. For a second he turned away and put the door back in place with one swift wrench. And then he was glowering again.I took a deep breath and rolled up onto my knees, holding my hands out, palms up, wishing that some magic would appear in them. Something I could give him, something I could say. But my hands were empty."You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me." His eyes blazed - burning brighter than I had ever seen them, blue fires."Ian," I whispered. "You have to see that... that I can't stay. You must se that.""No!" he shouted at me.I cringed back, and, abruptly, Ian crumpled forward, falling to his knees, falling into me. He buried his head in my stomach, and his arms locked around my waist. He was shaking, shaking hard, and loud, desperate sobs were breaking out of his chest."No, Ian, no," I begged. This was so much worse than his anger. "Don't, please. Please, don't.""Wanda," he moaned."Ian, please. Don't feel this way. Don't. I'm so sorry. Please."I was crying too, shaking too, though that might have been him shaking me."You can't leave.""I have to, I have to," I sobbed.And then we cried wordlessly for a long time.”

“After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do the best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.”

“I loved Ian in the now, the way he looked at me, how he made my stomach swim, how he held my hair when I was puking my guts up after eating a bad enchilada. That’s love.”

“Excuse me?" he said. "It's wrong to have something to say? I guess we could do the paper on Gandhi's feelings about make-up and fashion, but other than that Vogue cover in that really cute loincloth after he'd had all the diet success, we don't have a lot of material.”