“Of course it hurts", she grumbled, tipping my head further back. "Life sucks. Get over it”

“Welcome to adulthood," she said. "It sucks as much as high school.”

“Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.”

“It's so weird," Chloe said finally, "that it doesn't feel different now." "What?" I asked her. "Everything," she said. "I mean, this is what we've been waiting for, right? High school's over. It's a whole new thing but it feels exactly the same." "That's because nothing new has started yet," Jess told her. She had her face tipped up, eyes on the sky above us. "By the end of the summer, then things will feel new. Because they will be." Chloe pulled another tiny bottle—this time gin—out of her jacket pocket and popped the top. "It sucks to wait, though," she said, taking a sip of it. "I mean, for everything to begin.”

“She shook her head. "Look. We both know life is short, Macy. Too short to waste a single second with anyonewho doesn't appreciate and value you. ""You said the other day life was long," I shot back. "Which is it?""It's both," she said, shrugging. "It all depends on how you choose to live it. It's like forever, alwayschanging.”

“As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.”

“Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.”