Daddy,” I whispered, feeling my own breath hitch in my throat. “I love you.”Just when I was sure he was asleep, the one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “I knew that,” he murmured. “Always knew that.
I’d found out that if you pushed people away hard enough, they tended to go.
All the stuff you can’t wait to get away from, until it’s not there anymore, and then you miss it like crazy.
The best discoveries always happened to the people who weren’t looking for them.
Roger, he has a chain saw,” I hissed. “I am not going to die in Kentucky!
What was the point of trying to run away if people were going to insist on reminding you of what you were running from?
And we were kissing like drowning people breathe– like suddenly we’d discovered something that has never been so sweet before that moment.
You + Mesaw this…AMERICAThank you for finding America with me
Tomorrow will be better.”“But what if it’s not?” I asked.“Then you say it again tomorrow. Because it might be. You never know, right? At some point, tomorrow will be better.
Real friends are the ones you can count on no matter what.The ones who go into the forest to find you and bring you home.And real friends never have to tell you that they’re your friends.
I knew in that moment that things would be forever different- that today was gong to be the day that split my life into before and after.
It’s always a risk. Wherever there is great emotion. because there is power in that. And few people handle power well.
It was like a bomb had just gone off in the kitchen, and instead of cleaning up the rubble, people were stepping around it and eating mini-quiche.
I tried to shut out the feelings that were hurting my heart with a thousand tiny pinpricks, which was somehow worse that having it broken all at once.
And she kept following the truck, like we were a very small parade, waving and waving, until Frank took the curve in the road and then she was gone.
Anyone else would have probably stayed put—or at least looked deeply uncomfortable, but Frank seemed like he was taking this in stride, like helping to reunite friends was just a normal thing he did.
Terrible things happened when you were least expecting them…But it seemed that wonderful things could happen too. You could be forced to take a trip, not knowing who you would meet. Not knowing that it would change your life.
It’s not about the destination. It’s getting there that’s the good part.- Leonard
It was like there was an elephant in the room. An elephant that expected us to have sex.
I was speaking without thinking about it first, not hesitating, just saying what I felt first.
Nothing worth doing is easy,” frank said. “Especially not in the beginning. But I’m not about to give up.
And I felt, in the silence that followed, everything that had happened on the trip to bring me to this place.
In a well-ordered universe…camping would take place indoors.
You don’t have to go away to know where your home is.
You get up, you dress up, you show up. And usually have a pretty good time by the end of it.
I looked like someone who’d had a night, and had a story to tell about it.
It was kind of like what I imagined it would be like to drink a forest fire.
You’re the brightest thing in the room,” he said. He lifted his hand from my waist, and slowly, carefully brushed a stray lock of hair from my cheek. “You shine.
And sometimes,” she added, in a slightly hushed tone, like she was letting me in on a secret, “if you don’t feel great on the inside, just look great on the outside, and after a while you won’t be able to tell the difference.
I waited to feel incredibly embarrassed, but the feeling didn’t come. It was more like a small victory, a secret to everyone else but me.
And when I started to cry as I pulled into my driveway,it was coming down hard enough that I could pretend that it was only the rain hitting my face, and not the fact that I’d just lost another friend.
I know,’ I said, thinking about the trip my mother had wanted me to take, and the trip we’d ended up taking, and how much better ours had been.
We were kissing like it was a long-forgotten language that we’d once been fluent in and were finding again