Destinations are overrated, as long as your moving, your going somewhere.
I was doing it again, jumping around. But it was so hard to start at the beginning when you knew how it would end.
The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns. Otherwise, how could I have all these things and still be so close to my own Best After Ever?
You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.
People are not uniform, Emaline. There is no such thing as any other girl.
My own life felt flat and sad too much of the time; it was reassuring, somehow, to lose myself in someone else’s.
The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself.
This isn’t about him. It’s about you. You shouldn’t do anything you’re not ready for.
Everyone can make scrambled eggs, Remy. It’s programmed into you at birth, the default setting. Like being able to swim and knowing not to mix pickles with oatmeal. You just know.
If you take nothing else from what I’ve been through, at least remember this: make your choices well. Because you’ll always be accountable for them. That’s what being an adult is all about.
In the dark everyone felt the same: the edges blurred.
Someone who normally moved so slowly, this time, for once, was long gone.
The specifics of what, exactly, these terms meant were never explained; as with any fantasy, vagueness was part of the appeal.
I brushed my fingers over the beads and watched as her image rippled, like it was on water, breaking apart gently and shimmering before becoming whole again.
Later, it would take me a minute to remember how exactly it happened. If I turned around and moved forward first, or he did. I just knew we didn’t meet halfway. It was just a short distance really, not worth squabbling over. And maybe it didn’t matter so much whether he took the step or I did. All I knew was that he was there.
I felt only him kissing me back, easing me into the sunlight as I lost myself in the taste of him and felt the world go on, just as it always had, all around us.
The past was so sticky, full of land mines: I made it a point, usually, not to be so detailed in the map of myself I handed over to a guy. And the song, that song, was one of the biggest keys to me. Like a soft spot, a bruise that never quite healed right. The first place I was sure they would strike back, when the time came for them to do so.
He was so close to me in that moment, too close, but I had never pushed a guy away for that. If anything I pulled them nearer, taking them in, as I did now, sure in my belief that knowing me that well would easily be enough to scare them away.
I can see that everyone else is doing exactly what they wanted with the rest of their lives. They’re all at the gate, pawing the dirt and ready to run, and I’ve already got a lame leg and am this close to being taken around back of the stable to be put out of my misery.
Friends don’t leave each other in the woods. they are the one who come and take you out.