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We're broken. It's like we have all these jagged edges that scare other people off, but when we're with each other, our jagged edges fit together and we're almost whole.

She knew exactly what he meant. Despite their differences, because of their differences, they were a perfect mismatched set. Two sides of the same tarnished penny. An out-of-step Fred and Ginger. Vaughn was just as fucked up as she was - he was just so much better at hiding it.

Mostly she just missed Vaughn. Missed all those quiet, unspectacular moments that, when added up, showed how entwined their lives had become. And right now, she missed being able to phone him, because it would be so easy to tap in the eleven digits that would put his voice on the line. ‘Grace, about bloody time,’ he’d say, and make it sound like an endearment. But she couldn’t call Vaughn, because she’d left him. Which was a novelty, until Grace remembered that he’d have left her eventually if she hadn’t done it first. She was never the one. She was never even the one before the one. She was the girl who seemed like a good idea at the time, but ultimately was just a phase that people went through. That was the way it had always been. Friends and lovers came and went because there was something about her which repelled them, and she didn’t have a clue what it was. It was a mystery that she couldn’t solve on her own, and there wasn’t a single person in the world who could help . . .

Secrets aren’t the same as lying,' Vaughn commented, because they both had the muddiest of ethics, which was an odd thing to have in common.

Despite their difference, because of their differences, they were a perfect mismatched set. Two sides of the same tarnished penny.

Like, if you're right for someone then shouldn't everything fall into place really easily..?

stayed. I feel like life happens to other people, and I drift in and out of their lives without ever making any kind of impact. I want to matter to someone.

What the hell was an acquisitions consultant? An arms dealer? A white slave trader?

It was another of those big life-changing moments when you didn´t know what the next ten seconds would bring but you knew that nothing would ever be the same after.

Maybe relationships shoudn´t be such hard work. Like, if you´re right for someone then shouldn´t everything fall into place really easily?

Anyway, I don’t want anyone else, I just want Vaughn.’ It was good to finally say it, as if Grace said it out loud then maybe the universe would get the message and send him back to her.

And once again, there was a table and several worlds between them.

This time she´d totally own the goodbye and leave him wanting more.

It would be like Cinderella moaning about getting blisters from her glass slippers.

Was there a better sound in the world than a champagne cork popping? Hell, no.

We’re broken. It’s like we have all these jagged edges that scare other people off, but when we’re with each other, our jagged edges fit together and we’re almost whole.

So even the transatlantic static couldn´t mask the lifeless quality of his words.

Secrets aren´t the same as lying.

Time for a whole new you,’ the make-up artist had said, and Grace wondered why everyone was so down on the old Grace. She hadn’t been that bad.

It was too hot for leather jackets even if you were a wannabe indie rock star in your very wildest dreams.

I know,’ Vaughn said, and signed his name with a flourish. He put the contract down and turned to Grace with a smile that made her stupid heart start beating again. ‘I’m glad we’ve cleared that up, will you put out now?’  It was, Grace thought, a strange way to say, I love you.

It’s just money, and money only matters when you don’t have any.

We're a good team, though neither of us is particularly house-trained, are we?

Well, she’s told me very little about you,’ her grandmother replied because she’d survived a war, one stillbirth, a daughter who’d got knocked up at seventeen and ten years of a Labour government, and she didn’t take shit from anyone.

No, the single most humiliating part of the whole fucking humiliating exercise in abject humiliation was that somewhere between then and now, Grace had actually thought Vaughn was a nice guy,