“Would Alona be gone before I even got a chance to say good-bye? A real good-bye? One last kiss and the chance to tell her that she’d made my life better even as she’d made me crazy? That we were better together than I would ever be by myself, but that because of her, I would be okay? Not great, but okay, and I owed that all to her? No. I needed to see her one last time.”

“I couldn't loose somebody else like that, without even the chance to say good-bye. Not again. Not her.”

“Okay, this was kissing. Serious kissing. Not just a kiss before moving out, not a good-bye, this was Hello, sexy, and wow, she’d never even suspected that it could feel this way.”

“I looked at her moonskin face her pansy eyes and her cobweb hair and I knew I would go on giving her one last chance for ever.”

“But I can’t leave, not yet. I’ll stay with her until sunrise. If I brace my feet, I won’t slide. I can rest my cheek on the roof tile and still see her. Pacing. Pulling her hair. “I’ll fix you,” I tell her. “I promise.” Even though I don’t know how.It’s better than good-bye.”

“It was not enough to be the last guy she kissed. I wanted to be the last one she loved. And I knew I wasn’t. I knew it, and I hated her for it. I hated her for not caring about me. I hated her for leaving that night, and I hated myself , too, not only because I let her go but because if I had been enough for her, she wouldn’t have even wanted to leave. She would have just lain with me and talked and cried, and I would have listened and kissed at her tears as they pooled in her eyes.”