“But I do get afraid. It's just that fear makes me sort of . . . angry and resentful, and I bite back at it. It's hard to describe."
It isn't hard to describe, you idiot," Aud said. "It's called courage.”
“Ah, you coward! Look at you, running."
"Actually, it's called improvising.”
“What is a gathering without unseemly drunkenness?”
“Long ago I dreamed of being a hero in your company" Halli said Huskily "I'm sorry to say your reality disappoints me”
“The stories that bind us, Halli. The stories we live by, that dictate what we do and where we go. The stories that give us our names, our identities, the places we belong, the people we hate.”
“I guess it was easier to hide her sadness behind the written word than to disguise the emptiness in her voice.”
“These are the kinds of thoughts that made it necessary to separate me from the other kids at school.”
“You don’t like all the makeup?”
“I just don’t think you need it. I mean, you look pretty without it.”
Oh, really? That was totally unexpected.
He started tapping the steering wheel like he was listening to a rock concert, or suddenly embarrassed, maybe wishing someone would shut him up. “Sorry I don’t have a towel in the car.”
Subject change. He was embarrassed. How cute was that?
“That’s okay. We should probably get home, anyway, and we have plenty of towels there.”
“Right.”
He shifted into reverse and did that thing guys do where they twist their whole bodies and put their arm across the back of the seat. Only his car had bucket seats, and his fingers grazed my cheek and then jerked as though they’d been stung, before he grabbed the back of the headrest.
He was staring at me, really staring at me, and I wondered if he wanted his fingers to touch my cheek again, because I wanted them to. I wanted to feel that spark again, that little spark I felt every time he gave me the slightest accidental touch.
“Do you like Mac?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said really quickly, too quickly.
He nodded, looked over his shoulder, and backed out of the parking spot.
As we drove home, a heavy silence filled the car. I began to wonder if maybe he hadn’t really been asking if I liked Mac.
If maybe he’d been asking something completely different. Maybe he’d been asking if I liked him.”
“Our past thinking has determined our present status, and our present thinking will determine our future status; for man is what man thinks.”
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