“Your friendship with her-it sleeps with the fishes.”

“And then I was asleep. That deep, can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth sleep, that sleep that is not particularly restful but difficult to wake up from all the same.”

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.”

“But with friendship, there's nothing like that. Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's just something you are.”

“We were kissing.I thought: This is good.I thought: I am not bad at this kissing. Not bad at all.I thought: I am clearly the greatest kisser in the history of the universe.Suddenly she laughed and pulled away from me. She wiggled a hand out of her sleeping bag and wiped her face. "You slobbered on my nose," she said, and laughed”

“Miles, as in 'to go before I sleep'?”

“This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.”