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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Because,” she said, “romance is always rewarding when the people are good to each other, but it’s the best when they’re good for each other. And Tessa Dare’s people are always so good for each other.”
you do know that living your own dream is queer resistance, too, right? Letting yourself be happy, doing what feels right for you, is queer joy. And queer joy is always a revolution.”
but as one of her personal heroes, Miley Cyrus, had taught her, she could buy herself flowers.
She kept forgetting she had money now. She felt like she’d probably always keep forgetting.
It was one of the simplest constructions you could make, but still, the scale of it excited him, in the same way that the opposite—carving tiny decorative details into a cutting board—excited him. A good piece of woodworking was always a balance of function and art, and building something that could help support a business, used by the town—for however many months the place lasted, anyway…
love a good artsy mc ughhhhh. woodworking is soooo sexy
“The lighting aisle?” “At Lowe’s. The best place in the world.
real ASF
“Gave up socialized health care for me, for this place. If that ain’t love, I don’t know what is.”
Once Mae had left North Carolina for college in Wisconsin all those years ago, Jodi and Felix had drifted, too, as Felix picked up guest university teaching spots: to Massachusetts, as Felix had long dreamed of moonlighting as a New England professor, to St. Louis and Austin.
so many us coded places!
“I grew up in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina.
ME!!!
“I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like books are the only things that keep me from being full of rage just…all the time.”
“Your brain makes some deeply embarrassing decisions in your early twenties.”
i refuse. i shall simply only make good choices!
I only lived in Portland for a little while.” Or fifteen years. Whatever. Mae didn’t need to know every detail.
PLEASE
but she loved pottery and sculpture the most, and Lauren did, too. Lauren had a wheel in her basement, made some beautiful stuff. The mugs in the ADU were made by her.
ughhhhh love
She was positive Theo would have things! to! say, honey!
to yet. There was Ann Patchett and Akwaeke Emezi; Alexis Hall and Talia Hibbert. Kate Clayborn, Gabriel García Márquez. Cat Sebastian, Olivia Dade. Kacen Callender and
i also love some of these authors haha. i love how anita kelly includes real people lmaooo
“Yeah. Like, scratch my head.”
wonder what activated this in you🤔🤔🤔
“I have to say,” Vik said on a sigh, “I particularly hate whenever people throw shit through windows. Feels a little too Kristallnachty for me. Even when the protestors I agree with do it.”
real asf and also jew confirmed ?
“Here with the Jewish trauma to bring down the party any time. So should I come?”
so true bestie!!
“Isn’t it high holy days time for you anyway? It’s—”
So much jew confirmation. if you didn’t know this character was a jew? you should know now
“I would’ve let Jackson come. But he has to watch his sourdough.”
“I’m just saying!” Vik laughed. “I knew you had a crush on the guy; I didn’t know you were in love with him.”
“The bookstore’s not done. And functional doesn’t mean well adjusted.” “I really think you’re both.” “Why do I feel weirdly offended right now?”
Vik circled a hand in the air, speaking in capital letters and an indiscernible accent: “Une Toilette pour le Gay Men of a Certain Age.”
“You’re dedicating…the bathroom? To your best friend?” “Oh, I think he’d be honored,” Vik said easily, and Mae nodded forcefully in reply. “It’s an important room.”
“Yeah, and even if it wasn’t, Ben and Alexei are apparently planning to hike part of the Continental Divide next summer and they have been super irritating about it.”
LITERALLY JUST GOT THAT THESE ARE CHARACYERS FROM THAT BOOK L M A O. LITERALLY MY FAVORITE GUYS PLS!
He called himself a bit more fabulous than the original, but don’t tell Him I said that.”
“They’re like a they/them gardening platoon.”
“A platoon?” Vik asked incredulously as they walked toward their army of monsteras. “That’s the best word you could come up with?” “I like it,” Mae said. “It sounds like…a cute fat duck or something.” Vik shook their head. “Never tell that to the armed forces.”
“You do realize,” Jackson continued, “that the two of you are just standing there, right next to each other, texting each other?” “Yeah,” Vik shot back, “as is our right, as friends.”
not sus at all guys!
That was what made The Moonlight Café so great.
please now we’re here!!! this is so multiverse
The karaoke was already in swing, a singer Mae didn’t know doing their best Avril Lavigne.
this sounds like a reference to one of the characters
“Emerson King. Owner of Short King Farms.”
“At least Jesús lived through the Eras Tour,” Vik murmured halfway through. “He actually said that,” Mae said with a tremulous laugh, “at the hospital.”
as the iconic tinkling piano of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” splashed through Moonie’s.
INSANE CHOICE
“Do you think,” she eventually recovered enough to say, “this is the first time anyone’s had an emotional meltdown to Vanessa Carlton?”
She always loved him a little bit more, each time he decided to leave an event. She loved a person with boundaries.
“When I tell you I thought I was obsessed with this man before,” Ben said across the table.
She had truly just gotten wet from watching a person sing Wheatus. She was never going to forgive him.
“Baby,” she said, and even if she was still laughing, the word caused another lurch of Dell’s stomach, “can I hold you?”
“Maybe having feelings for multiple people at the same time is just the way the world works sometimes, because love is fucking messy. Maybe we don’t have to feel shame about it if we’re honest about how we’re feeling.”
Maybe Mae had lots of friends who were into open relationships—shit, Jackson had been super flirty with him, and Vik had seemed fine with it—but
literally LMAO
And even if she never got to touch Dell McCleary again for the rest of her days, Mae had already experienced an abundance of love in her life. Jodi and Felix. Becks. Jesús. Vik.
Maybe you experienced a multitude of loves in your life, and Mae had already experienced her fair share. Maybe anything from here on out was a bonus.
“Dell,” she said, “did you really just say let’s go blue while attempting to have access to my vagina?”
She wondered if she could ask him to put those safety goggles on for her, next time.
How many times did one fall in love, over the course of a lifetime? Maybe there wasn’t only one answer. Maybe there was no limit.
“So you’re they to the dogs.”
Your forties weren’t really about being old at all. They were about watching the people you loved most actually grow old. They were about starting to lose people. And being utterly unable to stop it.
“I know,” she said, every night, wrapping herself around Nash, the one most willing to be hugged. “I know. I miss them, too.”
“Anyway, actual pregnant people gestate for even longer than nine months and I’ve been here for three. Don’t think it counts.” “Still long enough that Republican legislators would try to throw you in jail if you called it off.” “This metaphor is becoming very bleak.”
