- I don't want to think and I don't want to feel, either, unless it's as simple as this beautiful boy's knee inches from mine. (3)
- I close my eyes and lean into Ernest, smelling bourbon and soap, tobacco and damp cotton -- and everything about this moment is so sharp and lovely, I do something completely out of character and just let myself have it. (4)
- Why couldn't I be happy? And just what was happiness anyway? Could you fake it, as Nora Bayes insisted? Could you force it like a spring bulb in your kitchen, or rub up against it at a party in Chicago and catch it like a cold? (6)
- ...and he grinned a grin that began in his eyes and went everywhere at once. It was devastating. (11)
- I couldn't stop collapsing into fits of giggles -- and when was the last time I giggled anyway? It was surprisingly, intoxicatingly easy now. (13)
- ... I found myself flushing from the deliciousness but also the intimacy, his fork in my mouth. It was the most sensual thing that had happened to me in ages. (15)
- I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light. He never stopped moving -- or thinking, or dreaming apparently. (15)
- I'll write to you, he mouthed. Or maybe it was I'll write you. (22)
- Learning just how alike our parents' relationships were was eerie, and yet what struck me hardest was how even though I'd often detested my mother's indomitable will and even blamed her for my father's suicide, I'd never expressed this hatred to a soul. It had seethed and roiled inside me. On the occasions it forced its way to the surface, I took up my feather pillow and screamed my feelings into it, choking them off at the root. Ernest spat out his rage freely. Whose response was the most terrifying? (39)
- I was well rested and only slightly nervous until I saw Ernest on the platform, almost exactly where I'd left him in November -- and then my mouth was dry as cotton, my stomach full of bees. He was gorgeous in a charcoal peacoat and muffler, and his eyes were bright with cold. (42)
- It was like being born over each night, the same process repeated, finding myself, losing myself, finding myself again. (44)
- 'Isn't love a beautiful goddamn liar?' (46)
- 'I'd love to look like you,' I said. 'I'd love to be you.' / I'd never said anything truer. I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant. Hadn't I just felt us collapsing into one another, until there was no difference between us? / It would be the hardest lesson of my marriage, discovering the flaw in this thinking. I couldn't reach into every part of Ernest and he didn't want me to. He needed me to make him feel safe and backed up, yes, the same way that I needed him. But he also liked that he could disappear into his work, away from me. And return when he wanted to.
sep 4 2022 ∞
aug 9 2023 +