passport renewed, always pair red wines with meats and whites with everything else . . .” I counted on my fingers. “Find fulfilling work, fall in love, and chase the moon.”

if you don’t fit in, fool everyone until you do.

I loved how a book, a story, a set of words in a sentence organized in the exact right order, made you miss places you’ve never visited, and people you’ve never met.

Because the things that mattered most never really left. The love stays. The love always stays, and so do we.

plebeian?

That was love, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just a quick drop—it was falling, over and over again, for your person. It was falling as they became new people. It was learning how to exist with every new breath. It was uncertain and it was undeniably hard, and it wasn’t something you could plan for. Love was an invitation into the wild unknown, one step at a

Romance wasn’t in chocolate, it was in the gasp of breath as we came up for air. It was in the way he cradled my face, the way I traced my finger over the crescent-shaped birthmark on his collarbone. It was in the way he muttered how beautiful I was, the way it made my heart soar. It was in the way I wanted to know everything about him—his favorite

Every book is a time capsule. Who I am right now—as I’m writing this six months before The Seven Year Slip finds its way onto shelves—isn’t the person I’m going to be when you read this. Books are like a magical apartment in that way, capturing a singular point in time when an author writes a book that maybe, someday, a future you will visit and

That was love, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just a quick drop—it was falling, over and over again, for your person. It was falling as they became new people. It was learning how to exist with every new breath. It was uncertain and it was undeniably hard, and it wasn’t something you could plan for. Love was an invitation into the wild unknown, one step at a