“Adulthood is knowing that a fully realized character is always more important than the lines.”

“I think the important thing to remember is that all relationships benefit from a bit of breathing room. Especially friendships. It's only when you find yourself without the women who understand you that you realize there are very few women who will.”

“Maybe being an adult wasn't crossing some arbitrary age line into wisdom. Maybe it was like anything else - training wheels and mistakes, trial and error, and now and again that feeling that you might have wings.”

“I had great plans to surgically excise the quaking, complaining teenager within someday. If I could just get rid of her and her thousands upon thousands of issues - Do I look fat? Am I ugly? Will anyone ever love me? Will I always be alone? Is she fatter than me? How ugly am I? Are they making fun of me? - I was convinced I would immediately become the sort of casual and laid back adult person who was forever smiling and was genuinely unconcerned with the size and/or shape of her body.I wasn't holding my breath.”

“Nights with David the Physicist are upsetting,” she said. “And unconnected.” She sighed, took a drag, exhaled. “There is talking, about a thousand things. Laughter. Even some kissing. And then nothing. Nothing inspires him, if you see what I mean.”“I’m not sure I do.”She shrugged. “Nothing impacts him, I don’t think. His head, maybe his heart, these things are involved in the moment. I believe they are. But then the moment is over and he never thinks of it again. Or chooses not to care.”I slumped back in my seat. “He cares,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen him. When he looks at you, it’s like no one else exists.”“And when he looks away,” Cristina said quietly, “it is as if I don’t exist.” She toyed with her cigarette. “I don’t think he means to be cruel. I think he might think he is being kind instead.” She smiled. “After all, he cannot control what I feel. What the things he does make me feel. Or the things he does not do.”“I greatly dislike him,” I said.“I wish I did.” Cristina sighed. “But what would be the point? He is like a storm. You don’t like or dislike something of nature, you just try to survive it and hope for the best. Right?”“I don’t think he’s a force of nature,” I countered. “I think he’s just a coward. There’s no way he likes anyone more than he likes you.”“Maybe not,” Cristina agreed. “But that doesn’t mean that everything automatically leads to a happy ending. I don’t think there will be any happy ending with David the Physicist, Alex. I think there will maybe be one or two other nights I will have to survive, and then he will disappear because he’s a coward or because he just will, and I will cry some more and smoke some more and never know why.”

“It had seemed so foreign to me - the idea that you could move forward without a painful airing of grievances on both sides. But maybe - maybe it wasn't necessary to pick apart pain. Maybe some things just weren't worth fighting about. Some friends weren't friends anymore, but family - and there were different rules for family. It didn't make sense to sit down with family and detail all the reasons they'd upset you - for many reasons, not least among them the fact that they could whip out a checklist of your transgressions themselves. And after you'd both picked apart the carcasses, why would you want to be friends again? Maybe the important thing was to recognize that everyone felt wronged and slighted - but the point worth concentrating on was that everyone loved each other. If we worked from that premise, we should be fine. Or anyway, I hoped we would.”

“I thought that probably meant something - that we could only really look at each other through a looking glass. Literally.I didn't know where that thought came from, but I could feel that it was true. It had something to do with the two of us, seemingly so different, standing there side by side. There was no wall between us. But we both wanted to think there was.”