“He's not on a bender, he's got a broken heart. You and I both know how much it took for him to get one.”

“You know," I said to Michael, "my girlfriend took him down with a broken tree branch." "Too bad she isn't here," he said.”

“Home at last. Why was I not feeling relief? I turn in m bed thinking of the last time that I had laid my head on that pillow. Sadness took over me almost instantly. A pillow soaked in tears, the feeling of someone tearing a part of my chest out, it replayed in my head as if it had happened yesterday. I coculdn't believe that that girl was me. I was so much stronger than that, how had I allowed myself to become so vulnerable? I never thought that I would be the girl who'd get her heart broken. I never thought that he'd be the one to break it. But I was, and I know he did. I know, because, no one will ever know how much I cried that night.”

“That’s a good hustle,” I told him. “We both got a little hustle, don’t we?” He pulled on his jacket. “But I like to think we got more heart.”

“The hardest thing is that I’ll never know exactly what I lost, how much it should hurt, how long I should keep thinking about him. He took that mystery with him when he died, and a hundred thousand one-sided letters in my journal wouldn’t have brought me any closer to the truth than I was at the night I pressed my fingers to the sea glass he wore around his neck and kissed him back.”

“He pecks my lips. I knew you were the one the second I laid eyes on you. The one to bring me back to life.‘How did you know?’ He’s talking. I need to extract as much from him as possible.He looks me straight in the eyes. They are bursting with meaning. ‘Because my heart starting beating again.' He whispers.”