Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Nothing you or I could do will ever alter them. They are so much bigger than us. And they will not change within our lifetime. We can succeed or fail, get it right or get it wrong, love and lose the ones we love, and still the Summer Triangle will point south.

‘You have to have something on the line, for it to be called character.’ ”

Love in the sense that she trusted him, and saw all the good in his heart, and cared about him and wanted only good things to ever happen to him. Love in the sense that she would always be on his side, even if he was wrong, in the sense that he was one of the people on this Earth she believed in.

“This way, I’ll help you, and you’ll help another ASCAN, and she’ll help another, and on it will go. And then one day, decades from now, when we get to Mars, I’ll be long gone. But I’ll still be a part of it.”

She was no longer Joan, or no longer only Joan. She was also part of this larger body, this larger self. That could only exist when they were together.

No matter how easy it was for Joan to lose herself in this new life, she was constantly aware of the cold, hard borders of it. The world would not care for her and Vanessa as they cared for each other. It wouldn’t matter how pure the warmth in her chest felt. It wouldn’t matter that Joan had loved and accepted so many others.

In all of her time spent watching others, she hadn’t picked up on this part of falling in love, that someone could look at you as if you were the very center of everything. And even though you knew better, you’d allow yourself a moment to believe you were worthy of being revolved around, too.

the pursuit of finding one law to explain the universe is, yes, science, but it’s also the pursuit of God.”