Mary took hold of the zipper. “Suck it in, miss.” I obeyed, and as the dress cinched me in again, I thought of a soldier going to war. Different armor but the same idea. Tonight I was taking down a man.
Heal my heart and make it clean, open up my eyes to the things unseen, show me how to love like you have loved me.
You know that you’ve found something amazing, and you want to hold on to it forever; and every second after you have it, you fear the moment you might lose it.
Darling, you’re perfect.
Every girl will come with pros and cons. Some people will choose to focus on the worst in some of your options and the best in others, and it will make no sense to you why they seem so narrow minded. But I’m here for you, whatever your choice.
It was almost comforting, this mutual acceptance of our secrets.
Because even though you’re dating five other women, I think I’m cheating on you.
If this were a simpler matter, I’d have eliminated everyone else by now. I know how I feel about you. Maybe it’s impulsive of me to think I could be so sure, but I’m certain I would be happy with you.
I would be the best of us, the highest of the lows.
It turns out I’m absolutely terrible at staying away from you. It’s a very serious problem.
It wasn’t like I made his world better. It was like I was his world. It wasn’t some explosion; it wasn’t fireworks. It was a fire, burning slowly from the inside out.
America, there’s no question that you’ve had my heart from the beginning. By now you have to know that.
It hurt me to be away from him. Some days I went crazy wondering what he was doing. And when I couldn’t handle it, I practiced music. I really had Aspen to thank for me being the musician that I was. He drove me to distraction. And that was bad.
All I knew was, even if she wasn’t mine, I wanted to leave her with a smile.
That was my great ambition. Not to be Illea’s princess. To be Aspen’s.
I kind of wanted someone to rearrange the stars so they spelled out his words. I needed them big and bright, and somewhere I could see then when things felt dark. I love you. And I’m so, so proud.
It’s because I’m so good-looking, isn’t it?
You were the one who changed us when you left me in the tree house; and you keep thinking that if you push hard enough, you can make everything go back to before that moment. It doesn’t work that way. Give me a chance to choose you.
A lot of things are yours, America.
I pranced around the room like a blind moose, but what I lacked in grace I made up for in effort.
I know there was a time, when our country was new, when the assignment of these numbers helped organize something that was on the brink of not existing. But we are no longer that country. We are so much more now.