Emily

“I take a deep breath, still staring out the window. “I really, really, really like you.”
He doesn’t reply for a long moment. Then: “I’m pretty sure I like you more.”
“I doubt it. I just want you to know, not everyone is like your family. You can be . . . you can be you with me. You can talk, say, do however you want. And I’ll never hurt you like they did.” I make myself smile at him. It’s easy now. “I promise I don’t bite.”
He reaches over to take my hand, his skin warm and rough against mine. He smiles back. Just a little.
“You could rip me to shreds, Bee.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Love on the Brain

“In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can't Google.)”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“Anxiety isn't an attack that explodes out of me; it's not a volcano that lies dormant until it's triggered by an earth-shattering event. It's a constant companion. Like a blowfly that gets into the house in the middle of summer, flying around and around. You can hear it buzzing, but you can't see it, can't capture it, can't let it out. My anxiety is invisible to others, but often it's the focal point on my mind. Everything that happens on a day-to-day basis is filtered through a lens colored by anxiety.”
― Jen Wilde; queens of geek

“Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.”
― Sarah Dessen, That Summer