256 Quotes by Jennifer E. Smith

For a long time, it had felt like something way out on the horizon, this moment, something she had to squint to make out, so far away it didn’t seem quite real. Until now, when it’s suddenly hurtling toward them at an impossible pace, so swiftly that it doesn’t matter whether or not Clare is ready for it. There’s no preparing at this point. There’s only steeling yourself. There’s only hoping for the best.

And when the time finally comes to say good-bye, she’ll swallow hard against the tightness of her throat and the weight of her heart. She’ll think I’ll miss you and she’ll think don’t go and she’ll think please. But what she’ll finally say is simply thank you, and it will mean all of these things – everything promised and remembered, everything wordless and spoken and understood – and so much more.

For the first time in her life, she realized there was no hope of blending in.

He wasn’t walking because there were things to see or because he had places to go. It was far simpler than that. He was walking because it was better than staying still, and because it seemed the best possible way to escape his thoughts, which crowded his head like the fog over the bay, thick as fleece and impossible to see around.

It’s not what it isn’t.

But it’s more than that. It’s the same icy dread that fills her each time she starts to imagine it; not just the goodbye, but everything that’s to come afterward: the hurt that will surely trail them to opposite coasts, so strong that she can already feel it even now, when he’s only inches away. The truth is, she’s still waiting for her heart to get on board with the decision her head has made. But she’s running out of time.

Hadley’s never been out of the country before, but she knows enough to know that London is enormous; it is, in her limited experience, a big enough place to lose someone entirely.

Parents aren’t always right about everything,” Hadley says. “Sometimes it just takes a while to figure that out.

It didn’t help that she was right; when had that ever made anything better?