“It’s wonderful,” his mother says, and I feel something old and familiar course through my blood. It fillsall four chambers of my heart, and I think maybe, just maybe, it’s happiness.”

“It didn't matter.Carson wasn’t the one for me. He wasn’t even the one for right now. My life would hopefully have its great love story but this wasn't it. It would happen in D.C. in the next four years or it would happen in Africa, if I ever got there, or in Sienna or, for all I knew, Kentucky or Timbuktu.Life was long.And people only really had great love affairs in high school in the movies. And maybe during world wars. But this was not a movie and not a war, even if it sometimes felt that way. It was only high school and it was almost over with anyway.”

“I felt sort of sad that I couldn’t remember the last time, before tonight, that I’d paid such close attention to the sky. It felt like that must be some kind of sign that I’d lost my innocence and grown up without even realizing it.”

“It was enough to make me feel like retreating into some wooded or snowy clime, where only the most determined photographers or Mary-hunters might find me.”

“I knew guys got erections.I was perfectly prepared to deal with it. When the right guy and the right erection came along.”

“We’d had a bunch of classes together over the years, but I couldn’t be sure we’d ever spoken one-on-one and now that made me sad.”

“I play DJ, and you tell me what you like.” “Got it,” I said with a firm nod, fighting little jitters of excitement. “And who knows? Maybe something will be familiar. As long as it’s not death metal, I think we can rule you out as a potential Satan worshiper.”