More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
November 17 - November 17, 2024
When he makes no effort to fill the silence, I leave the room without his dismissal, an offence most men have gotten a bullet for. But I’m not most men.
Everyone called it “a better place” but what better place was there than at home with his wife and children who still needed him?
“I can’t believe you love me enough to do that.” “I couldn’t imagine loving you any less.”
We’ve kissed a million times but when he does so with this much hunger and desperation, I wonder how he manages to make each time feel like the first.
“I was either getting you out or dying with you.”
Alejandro drifts further and further away; alone at sea and kept afloat by a raft and sheer willpower. I wonder if it’s worth trying to pull him back to shore.
El Aliciente was important to Alejandro and his family because it was his father’s place; the last dream he had before he died. For me, it was something else entirely. I met my future in this lounge.
“Don’t diminish the scale of your own talent. Least of all in front of me. You’re extraordinary. I refuse to hear another word.”
“I’m not going to stop until you open up your heart to me.”
The temper my grandfather has always warned will be my undoing might finally succeed in extinguishing the last remnants of my humanity I’ve always fought so hard to preserve.
Thirty years and I have nothing to show for it except broken relationships, a child I never knew existed but was already gone, and the profound antipathy of the only woman I have ever truly loved.
“I once believed there was no greater oblivion than solitude. The interminable passage of time trapped in the madness of one’s own mind—a madness for which there is no cure. But if poison has bittered the sweetness of true love than oblivion must be this; the abyss in which I’ve found myself, longing for your presence, and realizing it is now forever out of reach..”
A pang of longing and loss runs through me, forcing me to look away. I miss the way he used to say my name. My God, my heart used to sing whenever he called for me.
Now when he says my name there’s weight in his voice. As if three syllables and six letters are such a burden for him to say that the sound is heavy when it leaves his lips.
I remember when my name used to be his favorite word. He’d say it whenever, wherever, with such freeness one would wonder if it was really...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
I miss the way he used t...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“Dahlia.” My eyes flutter shut. There it is. That. Weight.
“You can only give yourself over to so many men, so many times, before your body collapses from the sheer exhaustion of trying to forget me.”
The shape of her is divine, every curve lush and lovely and full, the kind of body men have immortalized through art for centuries.
“Alex?” I say. “Just how well did the sex work on you?” “Well enough for a few diamonds if you were smart.”
“I can’t say there’s much in my life I’ve actually done right. But at the very least, I have you. You are by far my greatest, most precious achievement. I cannot imagine doing anything else in life that’ll come close to how perfect you turned out. And I will be a proud brother and father for the rest of our lives.”
No one tells you how strange that is…to be an adult with the people you shared your girlhood with.
And I wonder if this is any way to live. Begging to be loved by anyone who’s willing because the people whose job it was to do so unconditionally never gave you what you needed.
What if I’ve overinflated my importance in her life because I want to mean as much to someone else as they mean to me?
Why is it so hard to be loved with the same depth and devotion as I love others?
Time passes so quickly when it’s wasted and the last year is starting to feel like a waste.
I don’t know what’s worse. Her being with other people to spite me or being with someone because she’s actually in love. Both thoughts make me murderous.
It’s been an adjustment seeing her without the red hair and while she isn’t any less striking without it, I’ve found it to be a distinctly different kind of beauty. Not my Dahlia; someone else entirely.
“Keep telling yourself it’s over, Dahlia. And I’ll show you all the ways in which it’s not.”
“Dahlia.” It’s my undoing. He says it without burden or weight, as if it is the lightest, loveliest sound to have ever caressed a person’s lips.
He says my name the way he did when he still loved me. He says my name in the way I’ve yearned to hear for so long I almost forgot what it sounded like.
Looking at her now I understand what it means to be driven to the brink of madness by a woman.
If you loved me as much as you say you do, you wouldn’t want me to be with someone who treats me the way you do. You’d let me go.”
“I think you’re confusing being unwanted with having freedom. Alejandro didn’t let you go because he didn’t care. He did it because he cared too much to force you to stay,”
We eat mostly in silence and I can’t help but wonder if I’m also the problem. I sense his closeness and I push him away.
I want more for myself. I can’t take it anymore. Please don’t let me go without a fight.
The second we walk through the door we’ll fall back into the same rhythmic routine of life together where our clothes hang in the same closets and our toothbrushes occupy the same corner of the sink. We’ll sleep in the same bed and when he reaches for me at night, I’ll give in to the crippling loneliness and lose myself to the illusion of being loved by him again.
At any moment she could retreat to the safety of her impenetrable emotional fortress and all I’ve wanted to do since coming here was take a sledgehammer to the walls around her. I want my Dahlia back and if it means tearing through flesh and bone to get to the heart of her, then I will. I won’t stop until the two of us are completely undone.
Alejandro doesn’t often allow anyone into the inner sanctum of his heart and mind but when he does, the intensity with which he experiences emotions and the world could break a person’s heart.
“I lie to myself all the time. I tell myself I had a father who wasn’t there because it hurts less than having a father who loved me and still chose to leave.
I think I want to throttle them both for being so stupid. I hate them. I hate them so much. Their happiness has an expiration date. One day, a year later from when the photo is taken, it’ll be the beginning of the end for them. They’ll both make mistakes, both hurt each other, both ruin everything that was once good and happy and beautiful.
Is this what happens to a person when they shut down? Is this the numb, quiet place Alejandro goes to when I can’t reach him? Because I can’t think of anything else. I want Brent dead.
What’s the point in yelling and screaming when he isn’t going to hear a word? What’s the point in this house if there’s no family living inside of it? I expected us to go down in flames. Something catastrophic, explosive, and cataclysmic. There’d be screaming, crying, shattered objects. Emotion. In reality, it is very quiet and very sad. I don’t think either of us is speaking the same language anymore.
I’m an idiot for thinking a friend of Dahlia’s would take instruction any better than she does.
This can’t be real. A nightmare, maybe. Hell, most probably.
Too much time has passed and resentment has muddied the waters between us. Right now I’m incapable of being objective and if I was to go back for the sole purpose of being his emotional crutch, whatever love still exists between us would go up in flames.
I don’t doubt Alejandro is in pain right now but what about me and my pain? Who will heal me?
