“But when you're alone in the world, really alone, you have no choice but to be open to suggestions.”

“There's something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. When you were tired of the radio and conversation, and it was okay to just be alone with your thoughts and the road ahead. If you're that comfortable with someone, you don't have to talk.”

“In those first few hours officially single again the world seems like it expands, suddenly bigger and more vast now that you have to get through it alone.”

“How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I wouldn't do it alone.”

“But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might no be forever?”

“It's a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.”

“I wasn't ready for this, but then I probably never would be, and this year, like so much else, wouldn't wait. I had no choice but to get out of my car, with everyone watching and begin in earnest, alone. So I did”