Jennifer E. Smith

It can__ be epic if there__ no challenge to it.

You could tell a lot about someone by the way they carried a secret-by how safe they kept it, how soon they told, the way they acted when they were trying to keep it from spilling out.

He looks at her and smiles. "You're sort of dangerous, you know?" She stares at him. "Me?" "Yeah," he says sitting back. "I'm way too honest with you.

I might not say it, but I obviously show you how I feel,_ she says. __hy do the words have to be so important?___hey just are,_ he says, standing up and brushing off the back of his jeans. __ot because you__e saying them, but because you__e not.

I think you have to be more of a believer for these things to work," he said, wiping some ice cream from his face. "How are you supposed to find what you're looking for if you're not convinced it's even out there?

She couldn't ignore the disjointed sensation that they were now two different pieces of two puzzles, and nothing in the world could make them fit together again.

There's always a gap between the burn and the sting of it, the pain and the realization...You can't survive a rift that big without it leaving a mark.

But a small part of him also knew that the reason he'd never ventured anywhere was because of the worry that the reality of the world wouldn't match up to his dreams.

Somehow he'd become the one constant in this whole uneven chapter in her life, & the idea that could change was unsettling.

It had always been the two of them through everything -every adventure and every expedition- and now there was this awful distance between them, and she tried not to think about all the stories they were missing out on, all the litle moments and bigger milestones that had happened over the past few weeks without the other knowing

Love is the strangest, most illogical thing in the world.

But it was different, somehow, to be reading it here, where the actual events had taken place all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. That was the thing about books, she was realizing; they could take you somewhere else entirely, it was true. But it wasn't the same thing as actually going there yourself.

People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline...The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and just like that, she's grounded again.

She understands now what she, in all her worry, had forgotten. That even as she hesitates and wavers, even as she thinks too much and moves too cautiously, she doesn't always have to get it right. It's okay to look back, even as you move forward.

Beside her, she can feel each breath he draws. How is it possible to be so close to a person and still not know what you are to each other? With baseball, it's simple. There's no mystery to what happens on the field because everything has a label -- full count, earned run, perfect game -- and there's a certain amount of comfort in this terminology. There's no room for confusion and Ryan wishes now that everything could be so straightforward. But then Nick pulls her closer, and she rests her head on his chest, and nothing seems more important that this right here.

Is it possible not to ever know your type--not to even know you have a type--until quite suddenly you do?

The morning felt like a mixing bowl just waiting for its ingredients; there was a sense of possibility to it, a promise of something more to come.

The idea that their paths might have easily not crossed leaves her breathless, like a near-miss accident on a highway, and she can't help marveling at the sheer randomness of it all. Like any survivor of chance, she feels a quick rush of thankfulness, part adrenaline and part hope.