You (You, #1)

by Caroline Kepnes

If people could handle their self-loathing, customer service would be smoother.

Full of disclaimers, you’re like a warning label on a pack of cigarettes.

Or is our conversation nothing to you? Am I just another stranger?

Days pass and I grow anxious. You parade too much and it’s unsafe and it only takes one weirdo to spot you inside and decide to go and get you.

I think of this neighborhood as safe, and it is, but there’s deathliness to the quiet here. I could probably strangle some old man in the middle of the street and nobody would come outside to stop me.

I must go unnoticed by the people who don’t notice people.

“The only thing crueler than a cage so small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so large that a bird thinks it can fly. Only a monster would lock a bird in here and call himself an animal lover.”

you don’t get anywhere in this world unless you know how to blend in.

I don’t say anything. I know the power of silence.

it’s an indictment of our society, this outpouring of curiosity for this liar’s whereabouts. Whoever distributes love in this world is doing a bad job.

Michael Cunningham says in The Hours: Happiness is believing that you’re gonna be happy. It’s hope.

Whoever said running in the morning gives you energy never had a day job that involves customer service.

Some good shit happens fast (a bestselling book), and some good shit happens slow (love).

MY, you have a way of making me do things I don’t normally do.

it’s amazing, how people only shape up until they have a gun against their head

I’m the boss and you want me to do that and I want to do that but I won’t.

What a shame to be so angered by what you don’t have that you treat what you do have like it’s nothing.

Don’t make a baby if you’re not capable of unconditional love.

“And, if there’s anything I’ve learned in almost fifty years on this planet, it’s this: If you don’t start with crazy, crazy love, the kind of love that Van Morrison sings about, then you don’t have a shot to go the distance. Love’s a marathon, Danny, not a sprint.”

I could fall off the ladder and crack open my skull and it wouldn’t matter. Like Elliot says in Hannah, “I have my answer.” My answer is you.

Me: That was fantastic. I woke up thinking about you in the shower. You: Good good. Me: Let me know when to come over. I have a feeling you’re gonna need another one. And then it happens, the most dreaded response in the world, more terse than any word, more withholding than a no, and strictly verboten for someone as in love with language and me as you claim to be. You: K I get the dreaded K and I ask Ethan to fill in for me for the rest of the day but he can’t. The day doesn’t go by and I’m losing it and I’m looking at pictures of you and losing my patience with customers and I close early and call you but I get voice mail and I leave you a message asking when you can come over. I’m home when you finally respond and as it turns out, there is something worse than the dreaded K.

I take my time walking up the stairs and onto the street. I want life to move slowly because I want to anticipate you with all my heart, greet you with all my heart, fuck you with all my heart and miss you with all my heart.

the problem with books is that they end. They seduce you. They spread their legs to you and pull you inside. And you go deep and leave your possessions and your ties to the world at the door and you like it inside and you don’t want for your possessions or your ties and then, the book evaporates.

When I make it upstairs I am genuinely surprised to find the books are where they were before we started reading. They survived the earthquake of our orgasm and the closed sign is where it was when we traveled into The Da Vinci Code and the bathroom is just as it was earlier today, before I fucked you to life.

There is no better boost in the present than an invitation to the future.

It is an indisputable fact: Some people on this earth receive love, get married, and honeymoon in Cabo. Others do not. Some people read alone on the sofa and some people read together, in bed. That’s life.