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It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”
“You needn’t wear the title if it no longer fits you,” Rory murmured. “You needn’t do anything you do not wish to.”
“I just wanted…” He waited. “I just wanted to see you.” His throat hitched. Then—“Come here.”
“Please, Rory. Take it off. I want someone to see me.” I whispered against his lips. “I want it to be you.”
“Fuck me, and fuck the rules.”
People who love you for your usefulness don’t love you at all.”
“It’s hard to see who I am when I am lost in what’s expected of me.”
“When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”
We’ll go to the Cliffs of Bellidine and look out over the Sighing Sea, all six of us. We’ll shout so loud and long that our echoes will sound behind us. We’ll lie under the stars on beds of pink thrift flowers and stain our teeth with wine. We’ll sleep, but never dream. I stood. Walked to the edge of the cliff. And shouted.
But, just on the other side of it, waiting behind gossamer— Was life, too. I reached into my hair. Took off my shroud. Held it out over the edge of the cliff. When the wind took it in its teeth, I did not resist. I simply… let go.
The gargoyle picked it up, held it upside down, and spent the next quarter hour hemming and hawing over it, pretending to read.
“Aisling.”
“Bartholomew!”
“Little Bartholomew.”
“You know this story, Bartholomew, though you do not remember it. I’ll tell it to you as best I can and promise to be honest in my talebearing. If I’m not, that’s hardly my fault. To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?
But I did not diminish.
