“I want to love all of my life as much as I love this night.”
“Life is built of these little horrible moments and the giant expanses of awesome in between.”
“He’s the guy who’ll do a ridiculous robot dance to make you laugh, who’ll lick the tip of your nose, make a fool out of himself for a smile. I’m sure if I tried to wrestle him to the ground, he’d let me win. And enjoy every minute.”
“You should see him with his shirt off."
Ansel rocks on his heels, sipping his drink. "Please continue as if I"m not here. This is fantastic.”
“I don't want you to leave without me. A wife belongs with her husband, and he belongs with her. I'm always selfish with you, asking you to move here, asking you to wait until it's good for my career before you leave, but there it is.”
“The problem with being in the eye of the storm is you have no sense of how big it really is.”
“Yes. I just want to fall asleep inside you. Maybe our bodies will make love again while our brains sleep.”
“Which was your favorite? Living room, or bed, or floor, or bed, or wall, or mirror, or bar, or floor?”
“Shhh,” I whisper, lifting my cup to take another, more careful sip of coffee. I smile into my mug. “You’re weird.”
“I think I need a cast for my penis.”
“What you feel, Cerise? I feel it, too. Fuck, Mia, I feel everything for you.”
“I love to taste you, do you notice?”
I curl my hands into fists around the pillowcase.
“I think this sweetness is just for me. I pretend your desire has never been like this.” He dips a finger inside and brings it up to my lips. “For everyone else it was never so silky and sweet. Tell me it’s true.”
“It’s weird, maybe, that I love your scar as much as I do.”
I have to remind myself to breathe.
“You thought it was the first thing I noticed, but it wasn’t. I didn’t even pay attention to it until the middle of the night, when you finally lay down on the bed and I kissed from your toe to your hip. Maybe you hate it, but I don’t. You earned it. I’m in awe of you.”
“Mmpf. You’re so heavy. Do you have bricks in your pocket? Get off me.”
“But you’re so warm,” he whines. “And soft. And you smell so good. Like woman and sex and me.”
“I find myself wanting to congratulate past-me for doing or saying whatever it was that caught Ansel's attention in the first place and-by some act of God or alcohol I still don't understand-held it. Sometimes, I think, past-me is a genius.”
“I’m not sure I ever made a woman come with my mouth before I met you,” he admits. “I love kissing you there. And I love your ass, it’s perfect.” With this, I feel his length stir against my stomach as his hands squeeze me. “I like any kind of sex with you, but I prefer being on top of you . . . You make missionary feel dirty the way you grab and move under me.”
“I want to watch you come,” he whispers, eyes moving across my face. He pulls his thumb back and paints a wet line across my lower lip. “I want to feel you squeezing me and I want to eat your greedy little noises.”
“I reach for my bag, pulling out gum, but he quickly moves to me, sliding his hands up my neck to cup my face. “Don’t.” He leans close, sucking on my mouth the way he seems to like so much. “You taste like me. I taste like you.” He bends, licking my tongue, my lips, my teeth. “I like this so much. Let it stay, just for a bit.”
“I catch only when he says my name, but otherwise have to trust that he's relaying everything accurately. I imagine it goes something like, "The sex was great and then we got married and now she's here! Help me! She won't stop throwing up, it's incredibly awkward. Her name is MIA HOLLAND. Is there a service by which we ship wayward American girls back to the states?”
“Mia, you're going to need to really up your game in order to bring sexy back.”
“I like any kind of sex with you, but I prefer being on top of you... You make missionary feel dirty the way you grab and move under me.”
“You just implied you’re banging me tonight.” His grin gets bigger as his hands snake around my waist.
“Play your cards right.”
“I forgot my cards … But I did bring my penis.”
“Well, I need to stay in France for another six months or so. You'll need to live there with me for a bit before we can buy a house Stateside.”
“It's possible I mentally calculate the danger of being relatively drunk for the entirety of the next few weeks.”
“We're married for the summer. Summer marriages don't get dragged down in heavy stuff.”
“I wonder if he thinks he married a girl with two personalities: vixen and wallflower.”
“And this is when I know we’re only about an hour and a half from Harlow riding Finn reverse-cowgirl on the floor somewhere.”
“What is it?" I follow the path of his eyes to the pan on the stove where I've tossed the prawns with the pasta and vegetables. He winces. "It looks unbelievable. It's just..." He swipes a palm across the back of his neck. "I'm allergic to shellfish.”
“He closes the door with a determined click, and I hear him call to a flight attendant, and I sink down onto the toilet seat, resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands as I listen to him through the door.
"I'm sorry to bother you but my wife," he says, and then pauses. With the last word he says, my heart begins to hammer. "The one who now got sick? She's started her... cycle? And I'm wondering if you keep any, or rather if you have... something? You see this all happened a bit fast and she packed in a hurry, and before that we were in Vegas. I have no idea why she came with me but I really really don't want to screw this up. And now she needs something. Can she, uh," he stutters, finally saying simply, "borrow quelque chose?" I cover my mouth as he continues to ramble, and I would given anything in this moment to see the expression of the flight attendant on the other side of this door. "I meant use," he continues. "Not to borrow because I don't think they work that way."
I hear a woman's voice ask, "Do you know if she needs tampons or pads?"
Oh God. Oh God. This can't be happening.
"Um..." I hear him sigh and then say, "I have no idea but I'll give you a hundred dollars to end this conversation and give me both.”
“We’re all supposed to be mildly horrified and then start constructing the funny details about that-one-time-we-all-got-married-in-Vegas that we’ll share for the next thirty years. There’s no sweetness or kissing, Mia. Only hangovers and regret.”
“I can sense he needs distance and it pushes a small ache between two of my ribs.”
“The problem with being in the eye of the storm is you have no sense of hwo big it really is.”
“There, just beyond his open palm, was our mother’s face. I wasn’t expecting it. We hadn’t requested a viewing, and the memorial service was closed-coffin. We got it anyway. They’d shampooed and waved her hair and made up her face. They’d done a great job, but I felt taken, as if we’d asked for the basic carwash and they’d gone ahead and detailed her. Hey, I wanted to say, we didn’t order this. But of course I said nothing. Death makes us helplessly polite.”
“I can scarcely believe the cruelty of the last century. It staggers the soul.”
“Keep in mind, Yakov Shepsovitch, that if your life is without value, so is mine. If the law does not protect you, it will not, in the end, protect me. Therefore I dare not fail you, and that is what causes me anxiety—that I must not fail you.”
“There’s still time to find him. And people assuming Marc’s dead doesn’t make him dead. How often
does Marc hold to the status quo?”
“You predicted quick victory. Now it’s going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don’t you know any better than that by now?”
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