From: That Summer

"...Sometimes the people you choose to believe are wrong."

"He loved you," I told her. "He still does, I think."

"He doesn't love me," she said, crossing her arms against her chest. "He might still love me as I was at fifteen, when I didn't know any better. When I trusted everyone. I'm not that person anymore." She started walking, holding aside the branches so I could get through. "He's just a boy, Haven. He was the first to really hurt me, but he's just a boy. There were a lot of them."

"Not like him," I said softly, although I knew that after today I'd never see him, or that summer at the beach, the same way.

"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