Eleanor & Park

by Rainbow Rowell

“I…”—her voice nearly disappeared—“think I live for you.”

“I don’t think I even breathe when we’re not together,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “I want everyone to meet you. You’re my favorite person of all time.”

“And you look like a protagonist.” She was talking as fast as she could think. “You look like the person who wins in the end. You’re so pretty, and so good. You have magic eyes,” she whispered.

She never felt like she belonged anywhere, except for when she was lying on her bed, pretending to be somewhere else.

But Park’s face was like art. And not weird, ugly art either. Park had the sort of face you painted because you didn’t want history to forget it.

“I think you’re…” Beautiful. Breathtaking. Like the person in a Greek myth who makes one of the gods stop caring about being a god.

Did she miss him? She wanted to lose herself in him. To tie his arms around her like a tourniquet.

Eleanor was right: She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

When he saw Eleanor walking toward him on Monday morning, Park wanted to run to her and sweep her up in his arms. Like some guy in the soap operas his mom watched.

She bent her neck back and kissed him like she never had before. Like she wasn’t scared of doing it wrong.

“She’s nothing and you’re … everything. You’re everything, Eleanor.”

There was something really exciting about that. He liked being near that, that kind of brave and crazy.

She kissed him with tongue. On the bus.

“But you don’t miss me now,” she said. “We’re together all the time.” “Are you kidding? I miss you constantly.”

“Nothing before you counts,” he said. “And I can’t even imagine an after.”

“There’s no reason to think we’re going to stop loving each other,” he said. “And there’s every reason to think that we won’t.”

Now, he was hers. And he wanted her to touch him.

“Eleanor…” he whispered. She nodded. “I love you,” he said. She looked up at him, her eyes shiny and black, then looked away. “I know,” she said.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

“You know?” he repeated. She smiled, so he kissed her. “You’re not the Han Solo in this relationship, you know.” “I’m totally the Han Solo,”

OH MY GOSH STAR WARS

“You can be Han Solo,” he said, kissing her throat. “And I’ll be Boba Fett. I’ll cross the sky for you.”

Because Park was the sun, and that was the only way Eleanor could think to explain it.

Then she kissed him. He loved it when she kissed him first.

Every time she looked at him, he was looking back at her. Every time she thought about kissing him, he was already closing his eyes.

He tried to remember how this had happened—how she went from someone he’d never met to the only one who mattered.

There’s only one of him, she thought, and he’s right here. He knows I’ll like a song before I’ve heard it. He laughs before I even get to the punch line.

Her eyes were dark and shining, and his arms were sure of her. The first time he touched her hand, he’d known.

You saved my life, she tried to tell him. Not forever, not for good. Probably just temporarily. But you saved my life, and now I’m yours. The me that’s me right now is yours. Always.

You think that holding someone hard will bring them closer. You think that you can hold them so hard that you’ll still feel them, embossed on you, when you pull away.

New Year’s Day,

there's glitter on ths floor after the party

Park would be driving to work and he’d see a girl with red hair standing on the street, and he’d swear for half an airless moment that it was her.

literally that one scene in gilmore girls when jess is getting his car fixed and is staring at a girls hair that looked like rory and the worker says "that's not her. she cut her hair."