Far From You

But my heart isn't simple or straightforward. It's a complicated mess of wants and needs, boys and girls: soft, rough, and everything in between, an ever-shifting precipice from which to fall.

We walk into the rest of our lives together, not knowing it'll end before it's truly started.

I don't say what I'm thinking. I don't tell him how lucky he is, that he can just sit there and admit it, sheepish, but unashamed. Like it's his right. Like it's okay, because she's supposed to belong to someone like him, instead of someone like me.

It was Mina this whole time, wasn’t it?" I give him the only thing I can: the cold, hard truth. The one that’ll rewrite every memory he has - of him and me, her and me, the two of them, all three of us: "It’ll always be Mina.

She was in love with you,” he says. “And I don’t think she got to tell you, did she?” My heart lurches, seizes inside my chest, fluttering to life at the words I’ve always wanted to hear. I shake my head. Tears spill down my cheeks. “She loved you. She wanted to be with you. That’s why she told me about herself. She said she’d made her choice. It was you. I think it was always you.

I'll choose you. No matter how hard it is. No matter what people say. Every time, I'll choose you. It's up to you to choose me back.

Bad ideas are sometimes necessary." It sounds so much like an excuse, it's such an addict thing to say, that it makes my skin crawl.

Her fingers bite into my arm, and I squeeze her wrist tight where I'm holding on to her, because this is what we're good at: hurting each other.

Like there aren't years of denial and heaps of lies and boys who touched our bodies but never had a chance at our hearts.

There’s this long road ahead. It’s never-ending, because you don’t get over losing someone. Not completely. Not when she was a part of you. Not when loving her broke you as much as it changed you.

She should know how good I am at pretending. It's all we do. I pretend that I don't hurt, that I want Cody, that I don't want her, that I'm not taking too many pills, that my virginity had been important. It hadn't been. It only means something when it's with the right person. And I couldn't have her.

When you're kept by a secret, the first time you hear it spoken out loud is mesmerizing.

I curl my fingers around the ring so tightly, I’m surprised the word stamped into the silver doesn’t carve its way into me the way she did.

But some marks, they don't fade. No matter what.

Wakeupwakeupwakeuppleasepleaseplease. No help comes. It’s just her and me. Mina’s skin gets colder by the minute. I still don’t let her go.

I give him the only thing I can: the cold, hard truth. The one that’ll rewrite every memory he has—of him and me, her and me, the two of them, all three of us: “It’ll always be Mina.

Some barriers, they're made to be broken.

But this is the thing about struggling out of that hole you've put yourself in: the higher you climb, the farther you have to fall.

It makes me laugh, the sound bursting out of me like truth. It makes me want to cry and thank her. To tell her that I've never told anyone before, and to tell it and have it be accepted like it's no big deal feels like a gift.

this long road ahead. It’s never-ending, because you don’t get over losing someone. Not completely. Not when she was a part of you. Not when loving her broke you as much as it changed

I’m still not sure what I ever did to inspire that need, that love in them both. I’m not honest and steady like Trev or bright and burning like Mina. I’m just me, with dirt underneath my fingernails and a weakness for love and drugs. Somehow, though, I’ve managed to tie us all in knots, and I don’t know how we can break free. “We

We walk into the rest of our lives together, not knowing it’ll end before it’s truly started.

But my heart isn’t simple or straightforward. It’s a complicated mess of wants and needs, boys and girls: soft, rough, and everything in between, an ever-shifting precipice from which to fall.

She died scared and in pain, and I felt it.

This is her first novel.