Confess

The nights you swear you'll never forget, and how quietly they go.

Nobody tells you how those nights that stand out in your memory—levee sunset nights, hurricane nights, first kiss nights, homesick sleepover nights, nights when you stood at your bedroom window and looked at the lilies one porch over and thought they would stand out, singular and crystallized, in your memory forever—they aren’t really anything. They’re everything, and they’re nothing. They make you who you are, and they happen at the same time a twenty-three-year-old a million miles away is warming up some leftovers, turning in early, switching off the lamp. They’re so easy to lose.

One Last Stop · Casey McQuiston

How a doctorate turns into a side hustle you never put on the CV.

Not that there would be anything wrong: sex work is legitimate work, and people who engage in it are just as deserving of respect as ballerinas, or firefighters, or hedge fund managers. But ten months ago, when I graduated with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Northeastern, I figured that by now I’d have a reasonably remunerated academic position. I did not imagine that at twenty-seven I’d be paying my water bill by helping adult men pretend that they have dating lives. And yet here I am, fake-girlfriending my way through my student loans.

Love, Theoretically · Ali Hazelwood

A blessing for love that doubles as a warning.

I hope you find someone you can’t live without.I really do. And I hope you never have to know what it’s like to have to try and live without them.

The Selection · Kiera Cass