When you live with a potentially life-threatening condition you get used to the thought of dying. You accept it, you push on. The thing that scared me was the picture of dying slowly and painfully, the loss of independence and identity to illness.
It wasn’t merely fatigue. although it continued to worry me how tired i was all the time. I had a strange sense of missing something, of being in the wrong place – no matter where I was.
But we all hurt the people we love sometimes. We all let each other down sooner or later. Which is why contrition and forgiveness played a part in any relationship. Trying not to hurt each other, trying not to let each other down in the big things, that was as much as anyone could aim for.
Tucker said so softly the words were almost inaudible, “You’re wrong, you know. I would let you get away with murder. Hell, I’d probably help you commit it, if that’s what you wanted...
Some guys say it with flowers,” Tucker said. “I bring you arson reports.
You’re healthy. The healthiest I’ve ever known you. And that’s how I want it to stay. I want you around for a long, long time. I want to spend the next fifty years with you. I’m counting on spending the next fifty years with you. So please, for the love of God, don’t do anything to mess that up for us. Not everyone gets a second chance.” “I.
Like fine wine, I do not travel well. Sure, when I was young, fresh, low in acidity and not so tannic, I was a more adventurous spririt.
Cynicism. I liked that in a man.
It was dark.” “I’d know you in the dark, Tucker.” Tucker’s eyes flashed up to meet Elliot’s. He said curtly. “Yeah. I’d know you too.
I guess it was no secret I’d been unpleasantly startled to find myself suddenly hitting the big 4-0. You’d have thought the previous thirty-nine years were sufficient warning.
Nothing so simple nor yet so intense as a kiss between lovers.
But that peek into his uncensored brain made it clear he too realized there was a good chance things weren’t going to work out for us, that the idea of it not working out was already in his mind, and in some corner of his heart he was already preparing for it. And since I was already preparing to prepare for it too, I’m not sure why it made me so sad. But it did. It was like someone cut my lifeline.
You feel rain in a used bookstore. The old pages pick up the damp and mustiness like old bones do rheumatism.
How quickly, how neatly the chaos of a living person could be reduced to an insignificant box.
Had it only been a year? It had seemed much longer. Sometimes it had seemed like a lifetime. But maybe all lifetimes weren’t measured in hours, days, and years.
The best fiction captures the truth of real life.
What the hell was it that people loved so much about the great outdoors? It was just one fatal accident after another waiting to happen.
No one was in better position than I to know how easily shyness gets misread for arrogance or coldness or indifference.
Define history. Was it the sequence of factual past events, the stories about the factual sequence of past events, or the interpretation of the stories about past events?
Did he want to put a cock ring on me or did he fear I wanted to put a wedding ring on him?