Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

when it meant I might lose something. She said, ‘You have to have something on the line, for it to be called character.’”

Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.

Joan’s chest began to feel heavy and leaden, like there was an anchor sinking into the tenderest parts of her heart.

that they held. “I’m scared I will wait forever,” Vanessa said, her voice a whisper. “And it will kill me.” Joan’s heart began to pound. “I’m begging you to tell me not to,” Vanessa said. “Please. Tell me I’m wasting my time. Tell me I’m crazy. Put me out of my misery, Joan. Can you do that?”

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.

Joan would so happily, even if she were a vegetarian, make Vanessa a meatloaf.

This surrender had not always been easy—it had shocked Joan just how much physical pain there was in loving someone like this. It hurt Joan’s hands not to touch her in front of people the way Donna could touch Hank. There was a fire in her—a burning through her belly and chest—when they fought.

How was it, exactly, that two people could scar each other like that and keep going? In fact, go deeper? How was it that Joan could know that Vanessa did mean some of those things—that Joan could admit to herself in quiet moments that she meant some of what she’d said, too—but somehow the effect was to be tied together even more tightly?

tighten it the moment you said something. And I’d make you anything you wanted for breakfast every weekend morning. And I’d take your name, if I could. Or give you mine.”

It felt so good to Joan, to hurt to leave her.

They say love isn’t always enough, but Joan knew, in that moment, that it could have been.