Me Before You (Me Before You, #1)

by Jojo Moyes

Unemployment had been a concept, something droningly referred to on the news in relation to shipyards or car factories. I had never considered that you might miss a job like you missed a limb—a constant, reflexive thing. I hadn’t thought that as well as the obvious fears about money, and your future, losing your job would make you feel inadequate, and a bit useless. That it would be harder to get up in the morning than when you were rudely shocked into consciousness by the alarm.

“The ‘Molahonkey Song.’ I used to think everyone knew it.” “Trust me, Clark,” he murmured, “I am a Molahonkey virgin.”

“Lesbian tea!” He almost choked. “Well, it’s better than this stair varnish. Christ. You could stand a spoon up in that.”

“Some mistakes . . . just have greater consequences than others. But you don’t have to let that night be the thing that defines you.” I felt his head still pressed against mine. “You, Clark, have the choice not to let that happen.”

“Sometimes, Clark, you are pretty much the only thing that makes me want to get up in the morning.”

Good luck, Bee. And come see me after. Things may get a little bumpy for you afterward. Either way, I could do with a friend like you. My fingers stilled on the keyboard. I typed: I will.

“It has been,” I told him, “the best six months of my entire life.” There was a long silence. “Funnily enough, Clark, mine too.”

I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me,

You changed my life so much more than this money will ever change yours.

Just live well. Just live. Love, Will