Will,” he says, “do you have a sec to talk in the living room?” I spin around in the desk chair and stand up. My stomach flips a bit because the living room is the room least likely to be lived in, the room where the nonexistence of Santa is revealed, where grandmothers die, where grades are frowned upon, and where one learns that a man’s station wagon goes inside a woman’s garage, and then exits the garage, and then enters again, and so on until an egg is fertilized, and etc.
My mother sewed my name into all my underwear. But, really, it was another boy’s name I was ready to sew into my heart.
I think the important part is to not get caught up in worrying about whether something will stay, and instead enjoy it for the time it’s here.
If I didn’t have a boy, at least I had plenty of stories about boys. And honestly? Some of the stories were better than the boys themselves.
I am reminded how households with only two people have a different kind of gravity than others. We need the background noise, because otherwise the burden is entirely on us.
I put my hand in my pocket and feel the edges of Noah’s note. “I can’t believe you kissed him.” It would be so easy to obsess about how he found out. But that’s only a speculative digression. The real problem is that it’s the truth.
And love, I learned, is a constant act of creation, just as creation is almost always an act of love.
I wanted to like her and I wanted her to like me and that was more want than I had saddled myself up for in many a moon.
You are here for the headstrong girl who will grow up to be president or something more important, like an English teacher.
This is why we love stories, and love them from an early age: Nothing bad ever lasts in stories. And this is ultimately why we love life, too – because nothing bad ever lasts in life, not with the same intensity with which it initially appears. If we pay attention, stories can teach us that.
There’s only so long that you can stare at a wall before you feel like an idiot.
He points to a hot guy in a skintight yellow tank top – or some such article of clothing. You know, the kind where the guy looks more naked than if he were actually naked?
Also feel free to give every ex a number somewhere on his costume, like this is the deli counter from dating hell. Whatever works.
Love is something you can never get inside of. You might think you’re there. Sure. But then you hit the border and realize you’ve been outside the whole time.
I mean, what if love isn’t a yes-or-no question? It’s not either you’re in love or you’re not.
Are you a vegetarian?” I ask, based on the evidence in front of me. She nods. “Why?” “Because I have this theory that when we die, every animal that we’ve eaten has a chance at eating us back. So if you’re a carnivore and you add up all the animals you’ve eaten – well, that’s a long time in purgatory, being chewed.
Try to capture what it’s like to have never squeezed yourself into the shape of someone else’s expectations.
I don’t believe a word you’re saying... but say it again.
They kept fighting, even after we were gone. Or especially because we were gone. They kept fighting for us. We are gone and maybe our spirits are gone too, as the ones who knew us stop remembering us so often, or come to join us. But the spirit of that strengh it carries through.
Yeah, but the truth isn’t very helpful if people don’t believe it.