More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Moments before the pain in my lungs exploded and everything went dark, I saw it. A halo of light. An orb of pure sunshine. Her. I saw her. And that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew…
“But how come?” I argued. “He’s right up there.” I pointed to the front of the church. “I can see him, Daddy.”
Oh no
There was a big brown one and a small white one. Hugh said that Gerard’s daddy, Joe, was in the big brown one and his sister, Bethany, was in the little white one. Because they drowned last Saturday.
whole world, and he was in the brown coffin, but Gerard was my bestest friend in the whole wide world, and I was happy because he didn’t get drowned with Joe and Bethany.
Oh lordy
“I’m glad it’s not you in the box,” I whispered in his ear, leaning close enough so that only Gerard could hear me. “You’re my favorite person in the whole wide world, and I would swap everyone for you. Even Hugh.”
“When they said someone had been saved from the water. I prayed for it to be you.”
“I promised God I would do all the good things in the world if he brought you back.” I beamed at him. “And he listened.”
“I think they wanted your dad to save Bethany.” “I didn’t,” I admitted honestly. “I wanted to keep you most of all.”
“What about me?” he whispered as a lone tear trickled down his cheek. “Who’ll keep me safe?”
“I’ll keep you safe, Gerard.”
“But your hugs feel like sunshine.” “Like sunshine?” I frowned in confusion. “How?” “Because you are sunshine, silly,”
“I mean it,” he urged, turning to look at me now. “I can’t lose another person I love.” “You love me?” He nodded sadly as another tear trickled down his cheek. “I love you most of all.”
“I don’t see anyone.” His lips tipped up in the smallest of smiles before he added, “Except for you.”
He shook his head, looking terrified. “I’m drowning.”
“I like your face when you do that,” I told him, reaching up to touch the hole that appeared in his cheek when he smiled.
had somehow managed to sleepwalk into her bedroom. Again. It was the only place my legs ever took me. It was the only place I could breathe.
She had been the unfortunate candidate thrust into bringing me back from the edge every day since the drowning. “I’ve got your back.”
Claire Biggs had a lot of things. My back. My attention. My heart. My soul. Yeah, she had all of me and that wasn’t an exaggeration.
I’d slept in her bed almost every night since I was seven.
Unlike Lizzie, I had found a way to cope, and grieve, and protect myself without tearing strips out of others.
If I could sew this girl to my skin without causing her an ounce of harm, then I would do it in a heartbeat. That’s how vital she was to my life. How essential she was to my existence. If drugs were to Joey Lynch what Claire Biggs was to me, then there was no amount of rehab that could sway me to kick the habit. Because she was the habit of my lifetime.
Because I didn’t feel things with girls. I never felt anything.
I could still remember how it felt the first time she put her lips on mine.
The ping. The ignited buzz that throttled my chest and caused my skin to grow hot and cold and warm and tingly all at once.
I wanted to waste my time on her. All of my time. All of the time.
From as far back as I could remember, my mind had always been very clear about three things. One: Hugh was my brother. Two: Bethany was my sister. Three: Claire was mine.
loved her fiercely, solely, wholeheartedly.
If I knew nothing else in this world, then I knew that I loved Claire Biggs.
“Stay with me,”
Gibsie belonged to the rest of the world. Gerard belonged just to me.
“Don’t you shake your tits at me,”
“It’s dangerous to play rugby with body piercings.” “Then you better not check my cock,”
Being alone fucked with my head worse than anything else. Because being alone meant that I had to think.
He was the protector. Fuck knows how he came to be what he was, but Mammy K and John Sr. did a fantastic fucking job. Without realizing it, they had created a personal savior in their son.
Fucked in the head and getting progressively worse by the day. “You know me, Johnny lad, I’m always grand,”
but I can’t sit back and do nothing.” Like I did with you.
“I know words,” Gerard huffed, tone defensive.
I wanted him to want me, dammit. The way I wanted him…
“Hurt people hurt people,” Shannon continued. “She’s a hurt person. A hurt but very redeemable person.”
Shannon Lynch was his endgame, and Johnny Kavanagh was hers.
“Call me fat one more time and I’ll sit on you,” I warned, outraged. “I mean it, Hugh. It’s called being big-boned. And yeah, so I’ve put on a few pounds over the summer. Big deal. I can lose the weight, but you can’t lose that face, lad.” “Did you just call me ugly?” “Did you just call me fat?”
“Can someone explain to me why Joey Lynch got a two-week suspension for hitting one rugby player, yet Thor incites an entire rugby team into brawling and gets off scot-free?”
Thats what i want to know
And that was how I spent the rest of the evening, on Gerard Gibson’s shoulders, painting his world just a little bit brighter.
Johnny replied, sounding pissed as a fart.
Or for the boys to get their pediatric neutering so they didn’t fuck their own mam and have incestuous hillbilly babies?”
“Because you don’t love me the right way,” she whispered, leaning into my touch. “The way I need you to love me.” She reached up and covered my hands with hers. “The way I love you.”
“What would be going too far is telling him that Peter Biggs saved the wrong child from the wat—”
Instead, I made the biggest mistake of my life and, in turn, caused the death of not only my baby sister, but my father, too.
because while I might be cradling her face in my hand, she was holding my life in hers. “Bestie.”
“Who are we fighting, Gussie?”
