“I love my mom. And this time, I told her I loved her. And she told me she loved me, too. And things were okay for a little while.”

“That Sindy. She was so damn smart. But I never told her that. I also never told her that I loved her, or that I loved the two little stretch marks she got from carrying Vera. Or that I loved that freckle on her forehead. I never told her that I loved her lasagna or that I thought her views on politics were clever. I just kept my mouth shut because I thought that made me safe.”

“Yes, she told me she loved me and has loved me as i've loved her. While it made me incredibly happy, i was sad because we should have been together all this time and pissed.”

“So I told her that I loved her, not for telling me the thing she had told me, but for the courage involved in telling something like it, something that sad.”

“Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it.'I love love,' she said, closing her eyes. I promised her beautiful love. I gloated over her. Our stories were told; we subsided into silence and sweet anticipatory thoughts. It was as simple as that. You could have all your Peaches and Bettys and Marylous and Ritas and Camilles and Inezes in this world; this was my girl and my kind of girlsoul, and I told her that.”

“Charlie ... have you ever kissed a girl?" I shook my head no. It was so quiet. "Not even when you were little?" I shook my head no again. And she looked very sad. She told me about the first time she was kissed. She told me that it was with one of her dad's friends. She was seven. And she told nobody about it except for Mary Elizabeth and then Patrick a year ago. And she started to cry. And she said something that I won't forget. Ever. "I know that you know that I like Craig. And I know that I told you not to think of me that way. And I know that we can't be together like that. But I want to forget all those things for a minute. Okay?" "Okay." "I want to make sure that the first person you kiss loves you. Okay?" "Okay." She was crying harder now. And I was, too, because when I hear something like that I just can't help it. "I just want to make sure of that. Okay?" "Okay." And she kissed me. It was the kind of kiss that I could never tell my friends about out loud. It was the kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life.”