“He bailed on football practice.” As soon as the words left me, my stomach pitched. This wasn’t any of Phil’s business. He chuckled. “So, the Golden Boy isn’t so golden after all.” He lifted his arm toward my house. “Walk you home?” “Um . . . OK,” I heard myself agree.”
“I think your work likes you. You find beauty where others don’t see it. Or rather, they choose to ignore.”
“It had been a perfect fit, but perfection can be an illusion.”
“The human spirit is amazingly resilient, and the human body is surprisingly horny.”
“I’d been rushing to a finish line, and I’d failed to enjoy the run along the way.”
“Sinking onto the sand, I turned my face into the wind, hoping the breeze would blow away the pain. The pain of rejection, the pain of betrayal, and the pain of everything that had been lost to us.”
“You might not feel anything for me, but I feel everything for you.”
“True artists elicit an emotional response through their work. You, Aims, are an artist.” I”
“I don’t know how.” “You’ll find a way,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.” “You’ll figure something out.” “I’m all alone.” She”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll toast to us becoming great friends if you promise to tell me when you want something more with me.” My eyes rounded, then I tossed back my head, laughing at his deliberate word choice. When, not if. “You’re something else,” I teased. He shook his head. “Nah, just optimistic.” “All right.” I lifted my glass. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Good thing a look couldn’t scald flesh. I’d have blisters.”
“I was falling in love with my best friend, and I desperately missed him.”
“My brows arched upward. “That’s an interesting selection. You’re feisty tonight, aren’t you?” He rolled his shoulders and grinned, slow and sexy. My stomach quickened.”
“The pallbearers lowered the casket onto a metal stand, then moved to their seats. Thomas, James’s brother, slid into the front pew beside Claire, who was dressed in a black suit with her silver hair coiled as tight and rigid as her posture. Phil, James’s cousin, moved into the pew to stand on her other side. He turned and looked at me, dipping his head in acknowledgment. I swallowed, inching back until my calves pressed into the wood bench. Claire”
“Everything was in its place except the man who lived there. I”
“Fall for me, Aimee. I’ll catch you. Let go, baby.”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll toast to us becoming great friends if you promise to tell me when you want something more with me."
My eyes rounded, then I tossed back my head, laughing at his deliberate word choice. When, not if.
"You're something else," I teased.
He shook his head. "Nah, just optimistic."
"All right." I lifted my glass. "You've got yourself a deal.”
“His hands moved over my back, frantic. His lips were everywhere, my jaw, my chin, the length of my neck. His tongue traced my pulse point, making me hyperaware of every inch of skin. It was too much. I tore my mouth away. "Why are you doing this?" I panted. "Why now?"
His lips skimmed across my cheek. He nipped my ear. "I couldn't compete with a dead guy. You worshipped him."
"So I wouldn't forget him," I cried, desperate. I felt out of control.
Ian dug his fingers into my hair and seared his gaze with mine. "He's alive, Aimee. Flesh and blood. That I can compete with.”
“Fall for me, Aimee. I'll catch you.”
“background check on Lacy, look into the gallery, maybe find out the name of the artist on the painting”
“finished circling the room, ending at the desk in back. Books stacked against the wall spanned many genres and years, from Stephen King to Shakespeare, Spanish-titled novels and art instruction”
“Propped on the wide window ledge was a breathtaking photo of a lavender-orange sky kissing aquamarine waters. The image was magical, simply titled Belize Sunrise.”
“It had been a perfect fit, but perfection can be an illusion. I stared at my naked finger, the band of pale skin pink and tender.”
“I shook my head, pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth to stifle the sob threatening to be heard. I stepped from Thomas’s arms. “I have to go.” “We”
“I sat beside my parents in the sanctuary filled with friends and relatives. They should have been our wedding guests. Instead, they’d come to pay their respects to a man who’d died too young and too soon. He’d just turned twenty-nine. Now”
“I’d be twenty-seven and well on my way to becoming the proud, naive owner of a business with no plan, no employees, and no product.”
“But instead of walking down the aisle toward my best friend, my first and only love, I was at his funeral.”
“The organ blared as the funeral ceremony commenced. Everyone surged to their feet. I rose slowly, my entire body feeling achy and aged, and gripped the pew in front of me to keep from collapsing back into my seat. All heads turned to the rear of the church, where the pallbearers hoisted James’s casket onto their shoulders. As I watched them process behind the priest, I couldn’t help thinking they carried more than James’s remains, his body too decomposed for an open casket. Our hopes and dreams, the future we had road-mapped, also rode on their shoulders. James’s plan to open an art gallery downtown after he quit the family business. My dream to start my own restaurant when my parents retired from theirs. The little boy I imagined standing between James and me, his small hands linked with ours. Everything”
“El anciano se llama Linh. Es el único que lo sabe, porque el resto de las personas que lo sabían están muertas.”
“Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn't. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and... cancel her. She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.”
“Advice is superfluous to you, allies are superfluous, you’ll get by without any travelling companions. The goal of your expedition is, after all, personal and private. More than that, the nature of the goal demands that you accomplish it alone, in person. The risks, dangers, hardships and constant struggle with doubt must only burden you. For, after all, they are components of the penance, the expiation of guilt you want to earn. A baptism of fire, I’d say. You’ll pass through fire, which burns, but also purges. And you’ll do it alone. For were someone to support you in this, help you, take on even a scrap of that baptism of fire, that pain, that penance, they would, by the same token, impoverish you. They would deprive you of part of the expiation you desire, which would be owed to them for their involvement. After all, it should be your exclusive expiation. Only you have a debt to pay off, and you don’t want to run up debts with other creditors at the same time. Is my logic correct?”
“It's been a year. It's been a really hard year without you. Losing you felt like jumping off the bridge and forgetting which way was up. I don't think I'll ever be over it, but I'm starting to find my way through it. Mom said when a person dies, you don't get over it by forgetting; you get through it by remembering. I've been remembering everything lately.”
“When the examination was over, the doctor looked at his watch, and then Praskovya Fyodorovna informed Ivan Ilyich that it must of course be as he liked, but she had sent today for a celebrated doctor, and that he would examine him, and have a consultation with Mihail Danilovich (that was the name of his regular doctor). 'Don't oppose it now, please. This I'm doing entirely for my own sake,' she said ironically, meaning it to be understood that she was doing it all for his sake, and was only saying this to give him no right to refuse her request. He lay silent, knitting his brows. He felt that he was hemmed in by such a tangle of falsity that it was hard to disentangle anything from it. Everything she did for him was entirely for her own sake, and she told him she was doing for her own sake what she actually was doing for her own sake as something so incredible that he would take it as meaning the opposite.”
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