See for me, it’s immediate. Silence is so freaking loud.′ This seemed either deep or deeply oxymoronic. I wasn’t sure which.
Being nice wasn’t as easy as it seemed especially when the rest of the world could be so mean.
But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.
Okay,” he said. He took a breath. “What would you do, if you could do anything?” I took a step toward him, closing the space between us. “This.” I said. And then I kissed him.
You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you’ll never really enjoy it when things go right.
Maybe my sister and I shared more than we thought. We were both waiting and wishing for something we couldn’t completely control: I wanted to be alone, and she the total opposite. It was weird, really, to have something so contrary in common. But at least it was something.
You couldn’t see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it.
You couldn’t just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn’t like a light switch, easy to shut on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out. To me, it didn’t seem complicated at all. In fact, it was the simplest thing in the world.
But this, too, wasn’t true. Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so dammed hard.
I could pretend otherwise, pushing it out of sight and hopefully out of mind. But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance.
I would have thought this would make me feel better, for once getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn’t. Not at all.
But the original was there as well – more jaded and rudimentary, functional rather than romantic. It fit not just the yellow house but another door, deep within my own heart. One that had been locked so tight for so long that I was afraid to even try it for fear of what might be on the other side.
You should have seen your face,” she said, her breath hot in my ear. “Sa-woooon.
The silence wasn’t like the ones I’d known lately, though: it wasn’t empty as much as chosen. There’s a entirely different feel to quiet when you’re with some-one else, and at any moment it could be broken. Like the difference between a pause and an ending.
It was just the lightest dusting, and another person might have mistaken it for something else. But I knew where I came from. No matter where I was, or what got me there, I would always feel at home when I touched sand.
I didn’t hear the footsteps. Or see the shadow. Instead from where I was crouched on the ground, the green of the grass filling my vision, the first thing I made out were hands, a flat silver ring on the middle finger of each. One was clutching my notes. The other was reaching out for me.
The thing about negotiations, not to mention the manipulation, is you can’t go too far in any direction. Refusing once is good, twice is usually okay but a third is risky. You never know when the third person will stop playing and you end up with nothing.
I was thinking that maybe, by this point, I liked it better broken.
But down deeper, something I’d seen as solid – not perfect, but solid – was suddenly crumbling. I felt like I was falling to pieces right along with it.
Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.