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He leaned in, and he kissed me, and his lips were cold and salty from the ocean.
I wasn’t in Cousins. Conrad and I weren’t together, and Susannah was dead.
When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really and truly gone?
it was the first summer I wasn’t going back to Cousins. And that, I minded. That, I mourned.
understood. If I were her, I’d want to be alone too.
it was more like a habit, the kind of thing you didn’t really have a say in anymore.
I’d known most of these kids my whole life and yet I’d never felt more homesick for Cousins.
I hadn’t thought about Susannah in two hours, at least.
And no matter what you do or how hard you try, you can’t stop yourself from dreaming.
was better when we were together, less lonely.
then I heard him crying. Choked sobs. I didn’t go inside. I left him alone. I knew that’s the way he would want it. I went to my own room and I got into bed. I cried too.
She had to take a leave of absence from work. She had a room at Susannah’s house.
As soon as I heard the phone ring, even in my sleep, I knew. Susannah was gone.
She’d thought there’d be more time. She should’ve been there, when Susannah died.
My mother had been named executor of the will, and of course Susannah had known exactly what she was doing when she’d picked her.
This girl was prettier than what I had pictured. I could never compete with a girl like that.
There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you’d erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.
The only person I wanted was Susannah.
Susannah was gone, and she wasn’t coming back, and none of us would be the same ever again.
everything in life, there’s the game-changing moment. The one moment everything else hinges upon, but you hardly ever know it at the time. The three-pointer early on in the second quarter that changes up the whole tempo of the game. Wakes people up, brings them back to life. It all goes back to that one moment.
When I was near her, I just wanted to grab her and hold her and kiss the shit out of her. Maybe then she’d finally forget about my asshole of a brother.
She was looking for some kind of peace.
There was Susannah to think of. She was going to be so disappointed. I hated to disappoint her.
Only, it hadn’t been with Jeremiah. It had been with Conrad.
“Medicine is pretty amazing. For a while, I thought I would want to go into the research end of it, but now I think I’d rather be working with actual people.”
“She’s getting better, you know. Medicine is making that possible. She’s responding really well to her new treatment.
Sigh
He smiled at me, and it was written all over his face: hope.
But I didn’t regret it. I never regretted it, not for one second. How do you regret one of the best nights of your entire life? You don’t. You remember every word, every look. Even when it hurts, you still remember.
“Screw it. I don’t care,” Conrad said,
“Why do you want to help me? Why are you even here?”
the general store.
I wanted to memorize it all in case I didn’t get to come back again. You never know the last time you’ll see a place. A person.
This time really was the last time.
She was careful with her skin. Was.
“Belly?” she repeated. “Yup. She’s my girlfriend.”
The feeling that I was In Trouble. That we all were.
“Why don’t you ever listen when I tell you something? For God’s sake.
“You didn’t lose her. You left her. You don’t know the first thing about what she would
have wanted. You were never there. You were a shitty dad and an even shittier husband. So don’t bother trying to do the right thing now. You just fuck it all up.”
“It means that you’re so busy being up his ass,
you can’t see him for who he is.”
“What kind of guy cheats on his wife and then leaves her when she has cancer?
“I don’t know, Con. Where were you?”
And then Jeremiah said, “Why can’t you just let it go? Why do you have to hold on to all the shitty stuff that’s ever happened to you?”
Ummm
“Because I live in reality, unlike you. You’d rather live in a fantasy world than see people for who they really are.”
You just want everyone to be as miserable as you are.”
I’d never appreciated enough just what kind of man he was.
It was one of the last times I remember them being happy. I really wish I had enjoyed it more.
Did my mother ever feel about my dad the way I felt about Conrad—alive, crazy, drunk with tenderness?
I didn’t want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever.
