Our love is secret-keeping, late-night-sneaking, gift-giving, cream-soda loving, vanilla, trouble, and princess-pie-dusty incomparable.

His love is locked around my bones.

His love is forever-never-leaving. 

When I wrote the first "Love is..." scene in what is now Chapter Ten, I had to put myself in the head of a preteen girl. I'm twenty-nine, so my thoughts on what "Love is" are a lot different than they were when I was Bliss' age at that point in the book. 

To me now, love is watching my children wake up every morning. 

Love it the bed I share with my husband. 

Love is the happiness I feel when a new member is born into our family. 

It's when I see my mother once a year when she visits from Boston. 

Love is how excited my puppies are when I get home from work. 

It's the rush I feel during spin class. 

And love is giving my characters to the world. 

Since my concept of love is so different than Bliss', I went to Facebook—a place where we vary in race and age and religion—to see what my readers and friends thought of love. 

Here is what they said:

Missy MacKenzie Swain “Love is an unconditional feeling for another person and if it is deep enough and true enough there is no breaking the bond no matter what.”

Perry Maxwell “Oh my, I often tell people this, and I'm not sure I can say this succinctly, but I'll try. Love is not an emotion; it's not a feeling. It's not a transient thing. Love is a verb. It is demonstrated through your actions when words so often fail us. And when you use your words to express your love, you should mean it and OWN it by your actions. 

“It kills me how often people fall in and out of love. I have to question were they ever truly in love to begin with, but that's my own little soapbox. 

“Not to get religious, but I think it fits: I Corinthians 13: 4-8 -- 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“And this love can cross all kinds of relationships: parent-child, lovers, friendship, etc...”

Debra Anastasia “Love is making sure the toilet is clean after you flush.”

Ena Burnette “I think there are many types of love. I'm IN love with my husband where when I think of my future I can't picture it without him in it to the point where I literally would be lost. The deepest type of love for me is for son in which that type of love outshines all the other types of love he is the only person I would die for.”

Melissa Duncan Jones “Love is a margarita and loaded nachos.”

Carolina Perez de McGoey “Love between a couple is something you work at. It may all start with infatuation, crazy feeling, butterflies and dizziness but once it settles, once it matures and becomes love ( and this is not a time thing, it can take days or months or sometimes years) it's little gestures, it's companionship, validation, admiration, respect, desire, sharing, acknowledgement, unexpectedness, it's a glance that communicates so much, it's a caress that reminds you that there is someone there for you and with you, it's acceptance.

“On the other hand, love for your children is this intense and immense pressure in your chest, lack of oxygen, fear for them suffering, joy for their happiness, proudness for each accomplishment, tears for even their smallest disappointment, discipline even when your heart breaks a little. And it is a feeling that you can't really explain to someone that does not have children because it's nothing like romantic love. It's on a complete different level that one does not know it exists until the day that you have children.”

CJay Page “Love is letting-my-husband-do-what-he-wants-even-if-it-annoys-me-because-it's-Father's Day.”

you can see, everyone has diverse opinions about love, but all of these answers have a few things in common. First, love is a deep emotion—deep enough that we would actually die for another human being. Second, we don't love everybody and everything. Only those and what we think are worthy of our love have it. And third, we all feel it. 

It's just one of those things, and Bliss gets it. 

Love is what drives us to be good and to be bad. It causes us to overeat or starve, or both, depending on how we feel. 

Love for God makes most follow the rules. Love for money makes some greedy. 

Love binds a little girl to the monster down the hall. 

Because I think we can all agree...

Love is Dusty.