It took a lot of work to be perfect. If you didn’t want to break a sweat, there was no point in even bothering.

I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.

It's hard to do," I said. Wes looked at me. "What is?" I swallowed, not sure why I'd said this out loud. "Get it right.

Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm.

Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.” “It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin.

I would miss Colby, but it wasn't going anywhere. All the more reason why I should.