“The look he gave me...My stomach quivered in that exact same way when I watched Before Sunset, yearning for a guy to know me so deeply and truly, we were only really complete when we were together. That I could talk, go on wild tangents, make obtuse references, and he would divine my meaning before I knew what I was trying to say myself. Erik had fallen asleep next to me on the couch, complaining later that the movie was "just people talking." He had no idea that this movie could have been a love letter written for me.”

“This is beautiful," I said, ignoring the shop window to trace the gleaming stone walls fronting another boutique."You know what's funny?" Jacob asked. He didn't wait for my answer. "You can see beauty in everything, except for yourself."***I swallowed hard. Erik thought my body was beautiful, Karin that it was enviable. At random times, people had noted that my hands were beautiful, or my hair. The Twisted Sisters had called my art beautiful. Mom had the best intentions and always told me before and after my laser surgeries that I would be beautiful. But no one had ever said that I was beautiful, all my parts taken together, not just the bits and pieces.”

“And then there was Jacob, who stepped closer to me and then waited, letting me decide whether I would take the next step. Balanced there in indecision, it was as if the Twisted Sisters were before me, shaking their pom-poms, asking: But what is fair about staying with a guy who is ashamed to be seen with you? What was so miraculous about a relationship that was based more on my gratitude than mutual respect.”

“He knew me in all the ways that truly mattered: the shape of my fears, the contours of my dreams.”

“What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.”

“But the truly brilliant geocachers?""Yeah?" he says. "What about us?""They know it by its real name. Terra Firma.""Terra Firma," he repeats. At last, he slips his backpack off his shoulder. I know what he's looking for.I take a breath. "You don't need your GPS for this cache."His eyes don't move off mine; he's watching me so carefully. "You don't, huh?""Nope," I say.Some things are meant to be kept - what you learn from experiences good or bad, smiles from an orphaned girl, a boy who is your compass pointing to your True North. So I look at Jacob full in the face with nothing obscuring him. Or me. And then I step closer to him. And closer. And closer yet."Here I am," I tell him. "Here I am.”

“I understood now: how nothing looked more beautiful than that scar of his, that borderline that separated what Jacob could have been had he stayed in that orphanage from who he is.”