This is personal, she'd said. Real. This moment was too, even if you couldn't see it at first glance. It was fake on the outside, but so true within. You only had to look, really look to tell.

It's the same thing,' I told her. 'What is?' 'Being afraid and being alive.' 'No,' she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn't understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. 'Macy, no. It's not.

I'd learn that it's not just where you go, but how you choose to get there. So I pulled that sign off the green bike - ENJOY YOUR RIDE! - and went inside to take the first step toward doing just that.

I always say that teenagers are the first to know if you're pandering to them.

In those first few hours officially single again the world seems like it expands, suddenly bigger and more vast now that you have to get through it alone.

Remy: Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together? Dexter: You're here, aren't you?

Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible

And like my dad always said, the first step is always the hardest.