Happy Place

What can you feel ? Sunlight, everywhere. Not just on my bare shoulders or the crown of my head but inside me too, the irresistible warmth that comes only from being in the exact right place with the exact right people.

'Everyone fights with the people they love, Harriet,' he says. 'What matters is how you do it.'
'There are rules?' I ask.
'There are.'
[…]
'It’s ok to walk away,' he says. 'Everyone says Don’t go to bed angry, but sometimes a person needs time to think. And if you need that, it’s okay, but you should tell me, because otherwise…' His jaw flexes on a swallow. 'Otherwise, the person might assume you’re leaving for good.'
I swallow too and move closer, our chest melting together. 'What else?'
'There doesn’t need to be a winner and a loser. You just have to care how the other person feels. You have to care more about them than you do about being right.'

It’s that happy-sad feeling, that intense homesick ache. […] The feeling of being so grateful to have something worth missing.

Maybe I used to think there'd be a perfect time or place. But now, I think, if you really want to be with someone, you don't wait for things to be perfect.

The only way I can bear loving anyone this much is knowing it will never turn to poison. Knowing we'll give each other up before we can destroy each other.

He's a golden boy. I'm a girl whose life has been drawn in shades of gray.
I try not to love him.
I really try.

My best friends taught me a new kind of quiet, the peaceful stillness of knowing one another so well you don't need to fill the space. And a new kind of loud : noise as a celebration, as the overflow of joy at being alive, here, now.

In every universe, it's you for me. Even if it's not me for you.

'I think what’s hard about it,' I say, 'is that you need to do less than you realize. And overthinking it and trying too hard to control it messes it up. At least in my experience.'
He gives a half-hearted smile. 'Life.'

'Love means constantly saying you’re sorry, and then doing better.'