I collapse in bed and fall asleep with me other hand clasped around the blue rubber band. And I dream about blue eyes and blue nails and first-kiss lips dusted with blue sugar crystals.
Meretricious. Showily attractive but cheap or insincere.
They left me. My parents actually left me! IN FRANCE!
History books are filled with lies. Whoever wins the war tells the story.
Welcome to Paris, Anna. I’m glad you’ve come.
And it didn’t matter how many songs or poems had already been written about them, because whenever he thought about the girl, the stars shone brighter. As if she were the one keeping them illuminated.
Anna: You really think he likes me? Rashmi: Anna. He teases you all the time. It’s classic boy-pulling-girl’s-pigtail syndrome. And whenever anyone else even remotely does it, he always takes your side and tells them to shove it.
Seriously. We were never like that were we?
Saw two fallen branches in the shape of a heart. Thought of you.
Do adults realize how lucky they are? Or do they forget that these small moments are actually small miracles? I don’t want to ever forget.
I want to kiss him for the rest of the night, for the rest of our lives. The one.
I’ll only be twenty-minute train ride from your school, and I’ll make the commute to see you every night. I’d take a commute ten times just to be with you every night.
I grip the edge of a sidewalk cafe table to keep from falling. The diners stare in alarm, but I don’t care. I’m reeling, and I gasp for air. How can I have been so stupid? How could I have ever for a moment believed I wasn’t in love with him?
Beautiful. He called me beautiful! But wait. I don’t like Dave. Do I like Dave?
And, suddenly, I want to touch him. Not a push, or a shove, or even a friendly hug. I want to feel the creases in his skin, connect his freckles with invisible lines, brush my fingers across the inside of his wrist.
It’s maddening how someone so easy to read can be so impossible to understand.
But I could be mistaking our friendship for something more, because I want to mistake it for something more.
Something deep inside me lurched. The stirring was as startling and unpleasant as it was thrilling and revolutionary.
YOU feel sorry for ME? I am not the one who has never tasted bread pudding.
I blame it on his pants.