“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.”

“I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.”

“I looked down again at the sign in my hand - ENJOY THE RIDE! - and it seemed, suddenly, to be just that. A sign.”

“Looking back, it seemed like it should have been harder to lose someone, or have them lose you, especially when they were in the same state, only a few towns over.”

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

“Watching him, I thought, not for the first time that night, that maybe it should have felt strange to be with him, here, now. And yet it didn’t, at all. That was one of the things about the night. Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn’t so much once you passed a certain hour. It was like the dark just evened it all out somehow.”

“I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.”