"lying crookedly on his bed, huddled together in a way that, even half-asleep, I knew could only be described as cuddling. My head was propped on his chest, its rise and fall a gentle lull, calling me back toward sleep. My left arm was stretched loosely across his torso. He was snoring softly, with one of his hands resting on my hip. How we’d ended up this way, I wasn’t sure, but somehow, between both of us conking out, we’d managed to twine together like this."
"Before another word could escape either of our throats, he slid off the bed and walked toward me. It felt so natural as his arms wrapped around my waist and he pulled me into him. Like we fit together. It all came so easily. The way his lips found mine, even with both our eyes closed. The way his palm seemed to meld perfectly against my back. The way my arms fit around his shoulders. Like pieces of a puzzle, and this time I belonged."
"I looked up to find him staring at me, his eyes wide. He shifted, sitting up a bit straighter. Like he was just as anxious as I was. How ridiculous was this? We both knew rejection wasn’t waiting for us. We both knew how the other felt—because I was sure he could see right through me. So why was this so scary?"
"That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without."
"What is an “instant” death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous."
"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane."
