“Levi still carried grief with him like an empty wine bottle.”

This passage uses a simile to describe the experience of extended grief. An empty wine bottle is no longer useful but still takes up space and is heavy to lug around. Levi’s grief has become a part of him and is a heavy burden to bear, and part of his character arc (along with Dani’s) involves letting go of his grief over his father’s death.

“[S]he was all glamour, and I was all…vintage.”

Dani juxtaposes herself with Bella to emphasize their differences, introducing her journey toward self-love and the theme of Listening to One’s Instinct as a Path to Self-Discovery. With the comparison, she diminishes herself, equating Bella with something polished and desirable while casting herself as “vintage.” The pause before this word indicates Dani’s search for a softer way to mask her insecurity that, at least for Levi, she’s old news. Even though something vintage can be valuable, Dani uses the term here to reinforce the belief that she’s an outdated element of Levi’s past that can’t compare to his present with Bella.

“It was like looking into a picture frame from the outside. His love for his family was so abundant that I wished I could bottle it.”

The image of a picture frame sets Dani up as an observer, emphasizing her sense of distance, as if she can see the warmth of Levi’s family but doesn’t feel a part of it.