Slow Dance

by Rainbow Rowell

I felt like a short-timer before. You know, like I was doing my time, clocking in and out . . .” “Clocking in and out of humanity.” “Exactly,” she said. “But then I had kids, and now I worry a lot more about everything.”

Somebody should tell you beforehand that it’s more like being mind-captured than falling in love—they take over your whole head, and that’s that. You don’t ever want anything as much as you want to make them happy.”

He kissed her and kissed her. If she emptied her head in his lap, all that would fall out was his name.

“We dug up our past and laid it all out on clean tarps, trying to figure out what sort of natural disaster had come through and destroyed everything.”

I think my boss is bad at his job, and that he gets in my way. I don’t hate him as a person—he’s a kidney donor!—but I do hate him as a boss.

lol

As kisses go, it was the equivalent of shouting at your kid because they’ve done something reckless, but you’re still so relieved they’re alive. What were you thinking? the kiss said. And also, Thank god, thank god.

She was a finger hooked into every torn seam, tugging—and Cary was made of torn seams. Just a poorly stitched human being.

Shiloh closed her eyes tight. She bit her lip. She imagined herself holding him at every moment she’d known him, like a pearl-ended pin stuck through time and space.