Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Jimmy had been told from a young age that fear and failing and trying and wanting and openness and kindness and sincerity made him weak. And because he had believed it, he’d learned to suppress all of those things. And when he saw those traits in others, he hated them because he hated himself.

Of course men were uninteresting to her. They were fundamentally uninteresting. We are interesting.

Vanessa’s smile was so beautiful, the way it was lopsided, but the rest of her face was always perfectly symmetrical. The curls of her hair were the most gorgeous thing Joan had ever seen in her life, and she wanted to reach out and run her hand through them. To pull her closer. “Look,” Vanessa said, pointing up toward the western edge of the sky. “Hercules.” Joan did not speak. “The whole sky makes sense to me now,” Vanessa said. “Because of you.” And Joan thought, Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

I need everyone to read this book for this paragraph alone.

Joan knew then that Donna was not an idiot. And the Beatles were not nonsense. And that there had always been a place for her in this world. She had just been walking past it over and over again, never noticing that there was an unmarked door, waiting for her to discover it.