“She'd take these random occurrences and elevate them to oracles; she'd pretend that they were enough to justify her actions.Or lack therof.”

“She was tempted to take the elevator instead of the stairs just this once. But that was how it started. Take the elevator tonight because she was tired and her feet hurt from having been trapped in three-inch stilettos all day, and then tomorrow she'd want to take it because she was running late. Then, the next thing she knew she'd be taking elevators all over the place because she got winded climbing stairs.”

“She'd assumed she'd be married and have kids by this age, that she would be grooming her own daughter for this, as her friends were doing. She wanted it so much she would dream about it sometimes, and then she would wake up with the skin at her wrists and neck red from the scratchy lace of the wedding gown she'd dreamed of wearing. But she'd never felt anything for the men she'd dated, nothing beyond her own desperation. And her desire to marry wasn't strong enough, would never be strong enough, to allow her to marry a man she didn't love.”

“Were all first loves like that? Somehow she doubted it; even now it struck her as being more real than anything she'd ever known. Sometimes it saddened her to think that she'd never experience that kind of feeling again, but then life had a way of stamping out that intensity of passion; she'd learned all too well that love wasn't always enough.”

“She'd slept terribly the night before. The room, the bed, were both comfortable enough, but she'd been plagued with strange dreams, the sort that lingered upon waking but slithered away from memory as she tried to grasp them. Only the tendrils of discomfort remained.”

“At first, I could lie about my lack of sleep and she'd fall for it, but she started suspecting insomnia when I began seeing purple elephants in the air vents at the office. I knew I shouldn't have asked her about them. I thought maybe she'd redecorated.”