I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation.
But I cherished our filterless relationship and considered it the truest measure of a best friend, greater than pure affection.
Being around people didn’t make me uneasy, I just preferred to be alone most of the time.
But I also knew in my heart that I wouldn’t cover for my son if he committed a terrible crime. Any crime. I wouldn’t lie for him. I wouldn’t obstruct justice for him. I would stand by him, but I would also want him to confess and truly repent and bear responsibility for his actions. I would want him to earn and deserve his forgiveness.
After all, there is nothing like a mother telling you that you’re making a bad decision to convince you that what you are doing is the absolute best course of action.
I don’t love him, period. I didn’t love him before this. I cared about him. And I wanted to love him. Maybe I could have grown to love him. But those feelings just weren’t there. I liked the idea of him. It was exciting. He was exciting. Too exciting.
That is one of the problems with getting older. There is a distinct lag time between how you see others and how you view yourself. I still thought of myself as looking twenty-four.
It occurs to me that as different as we are in our behavior and decisions, our most basic, knee-jerk emotional reactions to really big things are often remarkably similar. And it is in these moments that I am most grateful for my sister.
Because sometimes I have the feeling that everyone thinks that everyone else is living a fairy tale. Especially in the South. People fake things so much. Put on a happy face and show off your perfect life.
In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it – like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it’s just the random way life unfolds.
I flash a fake smile of my own, refraining from telling her what I’m really thinking: that it’s an unwise karmic move to go around feeling superior to other mothers. Because before she knows it, her little angel could become a tattooed teenager hiding joints in her designer handbag and doling out blow jobs in the backseat of her BMW.
She was generally a happy person but had a tendency to live in the past, making frequent references to “when you kids were little.
I think of Josie’s theory that it’s all interrelated, that it all goes back to that night in December, all of our decisions and dreams and mistakes from the past inextricably linked.
I close my eyes, inhale, and feel a rush of heat and energy that takes my breath away. It is the feeling of wanting something so much that it borders on an actual need, and the power and urgency of this need overwhelms me.
I know by now that you can’t control your life, no matter how hard you try. That inevitably people leave and disappoint and die. But there is one constant, one thing you can always count on: that not only does love come first, but in the end, it is the only thing that remains.
It’s not about the actors, though, Peter. That’s the thing. It’s about the writing.
Don’t go giving this encounter any crazy meaning like you did with him the first time around. It doesn’t mean a thing. Not a thing. Sometimes, in life, there is no meaning at all.
Clutter is knowing all of the things that you absorb through your fashion magazines. Clutter is knowing which celebrities broke up with whom and why.
I guess she’s been like this since her arrival here, maybe even our whole lives, but sometimes when you know someone well, you don’t see them as they really are. So I honestly think I’ve managed to ignore this fundamental part of her personality, perhaps not wanting to see my closest friend in this light.
That’s unfortunate,” I say, choosing my words carefully and realizing that this might be the hallmark of a genuine friendship: how freely you speak.