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Because I think it’s a good reminder that the passions of young girls are worth nurturing no matter how frivolous they may seem
The acid burn of shame rises in my throat. My job is to control the story, and usually, I’m so good at it. I still don’t understand how I ended up . . . here.
But rage won’t help me get a job. So I swallow it as best I can and smile until my cheeks ache.
I used to think my life would really start the day Charlie Blake knew my name. And now he does, which is funny, because up until fairly recently, I was pretty sure my life was over.
but stop being so scared of something you used to love.’”
But I want to experience these songs while being out in the world.
had forgotten what it was like to feel this way—just totally undone by someone’s art, swept up in their emotions. Experiencing my own feelings as too big for my skin.
“As it happens,” he says. “I’m in LA right now. So if you can find an hour for me in person, we can have a second drink.”
Bad things happen in LA...
we’re sitting on the patio of a restaurant nestled downtown, right next to the central library. Skyscrapers soar overhead, but we’re lit by the glow of paper lanterns. A fountain in the middle of the space burbles happily.
These aren’t talking points to him. They’re his life.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, in my many, many long years,” Charlie says. “It’s that the world rarely ends when you think it will.”
This is a bad idea. I know it’s a bad idea. But I want to give myself something I want, just because I want it.
“And then you said you wanted to love me for the rest of your life. And you said it enough times that I realized that it didn’t matter if I understood why. You knew exactly who you were getting, and you always wanted more. You had chosen me. And I had to start choosing me too. So, Kate, I promise that I will try to love myself the way you love me. And I will try to be worthy of the gift of your love, and your confidence, and your light, and your warmth, every day of our lives.”
But then Charlie turns around and sees me, and smiles. And I know it was never really a choice.
“You can have as much of me as you want, Maya,” he promises. It’s hard to imagine a better sentence.
I’m thirty-five, not twenty-two, I want to tell her. I am too old to be patronized like this and too young to have bought into Lean In. I don’t just have potential; I have success.
The intimacy of touching his dog-eared pages—I
He’s not that exciting to me politically: another man with a Rhodes scholarship, a JD from Yale, and milquetoast liberal politics.
A necklace with a charm at its center: a snake, winding into an infinity sign, with a stone set on its head. Something twisted but not tangled. Sinuous and strong; whole and complete.
Feels kind of childish or like teenager ish for a necklace for an adult woman
Teresa won her campaign, just like Knight won his. The argument that I’m a liability is losing ground.
I remember exactly what it was like to be that young, and to need someone to tell me who and what I was.
“When I saw your picture in Vogue, I thought you were beautiful,” he murmurs. “But when I met you that night at Denizen and you opened your mouth, I thought—Oh, I’m in so much fucking trouble.”
