Slow Dance

by Rainbow Rowell

What was the point of being alive if you couldn’t hold on to the details?

“Things still change, Shiloh, whether or not you participate in the rituals of transition.”

“The more you talk about the past,” Cary said in his science voice, “the more you remember about it. The more it unfolds.”

What made a kiss good, Shiloh decided, wasn’t technique. It was wanting it—and she wanted this. She wanted him. She’d never wanted anyone else as much or as well.

“No. I . . . I think I’ve just gotten used to talking to people who don’t matter. And then I looked at you and remembered what it felt like to care about someone.”

He kissed her, and she realized that she was always going to kiss him back. That she would have kissed him back at thirteen. At fifteen. After any day of school. At prom. At graduation. When they’d said goodbye last summer. At no point would Shiloh ever have refused him. At no point could she.

Her mom was right, you couldn’t make new old friends—but

Shiloh made friends in school and at work, with people she was trapped with all the time anyway.

But they were all too self-involved and living too close to the edge. Desperate people weren’t generous. Or considerate.