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I love writing about the summer between high school and college. It's the last gasp of really being a teen.

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The truth was I knew, after all those flat January days, that I deserved better. I deserved I love yous and kiwi fruits and warriors coming to my door...more

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I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a differen...more

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I didn't pretend to know Eli at all, but even so, I'd noticed that his manner was slightly hard to read. It was something in the way he talked that ma...more

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Once you love something, you always love it in someway. You have to. it's like, part of you for good.

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So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more.

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It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities. Whenever you made a choice, especi...more

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He grinned again. We'd only been seeing each other for a few weeks now, but this easy give-and-take still surprised me. From that very first day in my...more

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It was just a tiny moment. Not a kiss, not even real contact. But for all the things it wasn't, it meant so much.

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I was such a smart kid, I should have figured out that the only way to really get my parents’ attention was to disappoint them or fail. But by the tim...more

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It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then...more

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That first love. And the first one who breaks your heart. For me, they just happen to be the same person.

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As long as I didn't say it aloud, it wasn't real

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If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.

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He was not my boyfriend. On the other hand, he wasn't just a friend either. Instead, our relationship was elastic, stretching between those two extrem...more