I thought about texting Lucas, but what would i say? That i’d tossed and turned all night, thinking of his hands on me?

The getting is easy; the keeping is the important part.

It was as though he didn’t exist, and then suddenly, he was everywhere.

That’s what faith is, right?’ he says. ‘Believing in what can’t be known? Fall into my arms, Dori. I’ll catch you, every time, and I won’t let go.

That’s how they say it: He loves you in his own way. Well, what about my way? What if I need for him to love me in my way?

It isn’t fair how I doubt him, and I wonder if he’ll ever gather that my loss of faith extends further than I’d ever known it would, severing lines of trust and leveling my confidence like a city-flattening tornado.

Really, he could have just punched me in the stomach, because my brain refused to comprehend the words he was saying. A physical assault, it might have understood.

When I was a child, I sometimes wondered if you were my guardian angel. Now that I’m older I know that you are.

They say the brain can block painful memories, leaving gaps and voids in place of them, but it didn’t work like that for me. I remembered everything.

Too much quiet left me depressed and consuming condiments for meals.