“All I know with utter certainty is this. Dan tamed me. We need each other.He has become unique to me in all the world.”

“We didn't run through fields of flowers, hand in hand. No music played when we kissed. No house landed on my mother. I didn't let go of everything all at once and become some bright and shining example to prove all it takes is a knight with a hammer to break the glass tower. Life doesn't that way. We tried, though, as we still try, every day, to make this work. To be honest and faithful to each other. To listen. To look ahead of things that lie before us instead of always staring behind at what we've left behind.I don't know what the future brings. All I know with utter certainty is this. Dan tamed me. We need each other.”

“No, Dan.”“And you want me to go.”I looked into his eyes. “No. I don’t.”He moved closer, encouraged, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Then what do you want, Elle?”“I want you not to have to settle,” I told him.“Is that what you think I’m doing?”“I know that’s what you’ll be doing. Because if you want more from me, you’re not going to get it.”He said nothing for a long time. “When I readThe Little Prince, I thought you must be the rose. You with your four thorns, convincing me you’re able to defend yourself. But now I know you hate roses. So you must be the fox instead.So maybe what you really want is for me to tame you.”From a lot of men, that speech would have made me laugh, or roll my eyes. Then again, a lot of men wouldn’t haveread Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic story ofThe Little Prince, or bothered to try and understand it.I reached for his hand and held it between both of mine. “The fox tells the Little Prince he is a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. Just like the flower was like a hundred thousand other flowers.”Dan tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with the hand I wasn’t holding. “But the fox asked the prince to tame him.To make it so they’d need each other and be unique to each other. And he did it.”“And then the prince went away, Dan, and left the fox bereft.” I looked down at my hands, holding his.“Would you be sad if I left you?” He asked me, and at first I wasn’t sure how I would reply.At last the answer came on breath as tremulous as a breeze wafting curtains from an open window.“Yes. I would.”He squeezed my hand. “Then I won’t.”

“I feel the weight of his gaze all over me, covering me like a blanket.”

“There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.”

“There are few times when we know with absolute certainty we are going to do something for the last time. Life has a way of moving in circles, bringing us back to places we didn’t expectand taking us away from those we do. There are too many times we don’t pay close enough attention, and moments are lost in our assumption we’ll have another chance.”

“From the first time you laughed with me, all those months, and all those stories,” Joe said quietly. “They were all you, to me. All of them were you.”