Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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

Vanessa held her gaze a moment longer and then pushed Joan up against the door and kissed her. Joan put her hands on Vanessa’s face and kissed her back. And, in that second, almost everything Joan had known about herself became untrue.

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.

“This is dangerous,” Vanessa said as she handed Joan a towel. “Those hives of yours might just be the most romantic moment of my life.”

My life is tied to yours, and to everyone’s on this planet. How does that not instantly make us more in debt to one another? And also offer us the comfort that we are not alone?”

All she could think about was how grateful she was that the Earth was ninety-three million miles away from the sun today, far enough to be warm but not too hot, just the right distance for life on this planet.

Just the act of falling in love was to agree to a broken heart.

There were four men on that shuttle. But every American woman was.

Joan felt, so acutely, that the incurable problem with life was that nothing was ever in balance.

But to love Frances was to be always saying goodbye to the girl Frances used to be and falling in love again with the girl Frances was becoming.

This probably wasn’t what an astronaut looked like to most people. But she was one, and she was going up into space. So the definition was going to have to change.

“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”