“If you could offer me a guarantee, Ely, a guarantee that the hurt that makes my heart feel like a boulder sitting inside my chest, beatless, if I knew this hurt would eventually go away and I could feel hope again - for me, for you, for us - then maybe my lips could "unlock" now and we could get on with this. The End.”

“It's that the silence hanging between us, the awkward and painful glance we share, acknowledges that I'm sitting in his seat. I start to stand up, but Ely shakes his head and gestures for me to stay seated. "It's cool," he whispers. I watch him stride away to the elevator.”

“I think we should get married here," I say. It's so obvious. Naomi sits down on the top stair, the edge of our corner, and rests her head against the wall. "Ely," she says, "we're never getting married. Never.”

“A void in my chest was beginning to fill with anger. Quiet, defeated anger that guaranteed me the right to my hurt, that believed no one could possibly understand that hurt.”

“What I’m sorry about is not being a tipsy idiot when you found me. I’m sorry about that, obviously, but more sorry that my stupidity caused us to lose a great opportunity. I don’t imagine you would have met me and fallen crazy in love with me, but I would like to thinkthat if you’d had a chance to meet me under different circumstances, something just as nice could have happened.We could have become friends.”

“Although, fanciful's origin circa 1627 made me still love the word, even if I'd ruined its applicability to my connection with Snarl. (I mean DASH!) Like, I could totally see Mrs. Mary Poppencock returning home to her cobblestone hut with the thatched roof in Thamesburyshire, Jolly Olde England, and saying to her husband, "Good sir Bruce, would it not be wonderful to have a roof that doesn't leak when it rains on our green shires, and stuff?" And Sir Bruce Poppencock would have been like, "I say, missus, you're very fanciful with your ideas today." To which Mrs. P. responded, "Why, Master P., you've made up a word! What year is it? I do believe it's circa 1627! Let's carve the year--we think--on a stone so no one forgets. Fanciful! Dear man, you are a genius. I'm so glad my father forced me to marry you and allow you to impregnate me every year.”

“Hope and belief. I'd always wanted hope, but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it happened.”