Rachel Lynn Solomon

But sometimes I get this strange feeling, an ache not for something I miss, but for something I’ve never known.

“Come on. I’m giving you an olive branch here.”
“If I can’t smack you with it, what’s the point?”

His words peel the Band-Aid off the wound.

Maybe that’s the definition of nostalgia: getting sappy about things that are supposed to be insignificant.

While I love romance, I’ve never believed in the concept of soul mates, which has always seemed a little like men’s rights activism: not a real thing. Love isn’t immediate or automatic; it takes effort and time and patience.

sometimes I get this strange feeling, an ache not for something I miss, but for something I’ve never known.

For someone who loves words, I’m occasionally not great at speaking them.

It’s a nice pair of shoulders, I decide. A shame they’re wasted on someone like him.

“It’s catchy, but… it seems melancholy, too,” he says.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“There’s too much bad shit in the world to listen to depressing music all the time.”

my mind trips over the way he said the kiddush, the sound of those words I knew so well in a voice I thought I did. My fingers tingle at the memory of sitting on his bed, touching his shoulder. An unusual moment of physical contact between us. Then the pointillism of freckles across his face and down his neck, the dots that wrap around his fingers and crawl up his arms. And his arms—the way they look in that T-shirt.