Most of the nicer guys have girlfriends, and we know this because they make it clear the moment we’re introduced, as if to say, “Don’t think about it.” Those particular guys have absolutely no idea what to do with girls who aren’t girlfriends, so at the moment they’re at a bit of a dead loss in the friendship department.
She thinks she knows who I am because she thinks who I am is who she tells me I am.
We’d go to bed furious with each other, and then she’d wake me in the middle of the night and come and lie on my bed and we’d talk for hours, about nothing and everything, and she’d let me touch the scars on her stomach – the scars from where they cut me out of her.
The girls would always tell me not to take things personally, but I never believed there was any other way of taking it.
They never leave home without their safety nets and I think, good for them, but the thing with safety nets is this. I got tangled in them so many times and the Stella girls always seemed to leave me dangling, upside down, to the point where I almost couldn’t breathe anymore. So I dance.
For a moment I can’t help thinking how decent he is – that there’s some hope for him beyond the obnoxious image he displays. Maybe deep down he is a sensitive guy, who sees us as real people with real issues.
But it’s the look in his eyes that I can’t help responding to, and I think to myself, forget the girlfriend. Just go for it. And I want to. But his girlfriend is there, a smiler, not a grinner.
Get over it, I want to tell myself. He’s just a gawky guy with a cowlick, not some stud.
If she allowed herself to give in to the whole sadness of it, she’d never ever be able to operate like a normal person again.
Sometimes you don’t let us talk about how we’re feeling. If we feel scared, you say, ‘Nothing to worry about, guys,’ but that doesn’t make it go away. It makes it grow.
She’s a dead loss. Has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She’s so insipid, she’s almost invisible.
Because we don’t live in a society anymore, Tom. We live in an economy. We’re not citizens. We’re customers.
I have an aunt and I have a Griggs and this is what it’s like to have connections with people.
An arm was instantly around his neck. A dagger to his throat. A savage growl in his ear. Sagra. How he missed her.
And if the gods were to give me a choice between living a better life, having not met them, or a wretched life with the slightest chance of crossing their path, then I’d pick the wretched life over and over again.
The worst thing about the slivers of light is that you get to catch people’s expressions for only a split second; then they disappear again, and in between you are forced to think about what it is that could make a person look so devastated.
And if I get a little chemically imbalanced in the head, like we all know I tend to get sometimes, and I don’t want my parents or brother knowing, Will’s like, ‘We’ll deal with it.’ He’s never said, ‘Snap out of it,’ and he’s never said, ‘I don’t get it,’ and he’s never said, ‘I’ll fix it up.’ He just says, ‘You’re not up to going back to uni to finish your Honors this year? Big deal. There’s next year. We’ll deal with it.’” She nods. “That’s what he does well.
How can you fight the world with a quiver in your voice, Beatriss of the Flatlands?
He’s never asked about her depression in the past, just knew it was there like a big black blob over her head. In Year Eleven they thought it was a one-off because her mother had been sick, but he had seen it once or twice again. Francesca knew the signs and he could tell she fought it with everything she had inside of her.
Some days are worse than others, my love, some days better than most.