Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness.
The weather turned. Her skin seemed to grow a million extra pores, and all of them opened to take in the warmth and tenderness of the air. The sun on her face made her want to cry. Into all those millions of open pores came the sunshine, and other feelings as well. In and out. She was porous.
People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight – at least as the normally experienced them.
Love made you admire funny things about a person, like how good she was at remembering to return her library books and at slicing cucumbers very thin. She was a veritable wonder at pulling a splinter out of her foot.
All the things she planned to feel, the way she planned to look and seem, the appropriate things she planned to say. None of them came to pass.
It’s natural to overlook and even sacrifice the things that belong to us most easily most gracefully. So here’s me asking you to please not make that mistake.
I like that you let yourself be surprised.
So far, she’d been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction. Lena Kaligaris.
I’m sorry you asked me out, otherwise maybe I could have liked you.
I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.
Show me a girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and I’ll show you a girl who can’t put her pants on. -Annik Marchand.
Marnie hated to see her spend so much of herself on someone who didn’t care.
Everything I ever said to you was true and is true.
I mean putting yourself out there in the way of overwhelming happiness and knowing you’re also putting yourself in the way of terrible harm. I’m scared to be this happy. I’m scared to be this extreme.
She got tired of herself. She got tired of not being able to say what she wanted or do what she wanted or even want what she wanted.
Carmen didn’t like change, and she certainly didn’t like endings.
She wasn’t as destructive as Bee. She had never been as dramatic. Rather, she’d slipped carefully, stealthily away from her ghosts.
Sometimes it is a relief to be invisible.
The dreams weren’t as pleasing when they had no chance of coming true.
She wondered if maybe tragedy was what it took to make your heart capable of admitting a new member.