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“This is one of the best things I’ve ever gotten. I’ll wear it with pride. Dash-and-Lily pride.”
She wanted to cry but wouldn’t let herself. Which was worse than her actually crying.
I had no idea how to make it better.
realize there are much worse things happening in the world, but my East Village apartment is the only place I’ve ever lived. It and the people in it are my world, and it felt like my world was ending.
“There any other reason you’re here?” “No.” “Then be on your way. I don’t give discounts, if you’re needing a gas fill-up.” “I don’t!” I said, exhilarated. “Merry Christmas!”
“We always torch the ones we love—” “—the ones we shouldn’t torch at all.” “Precisely.”
And this is the way to find out—to wake up each morning and start each day together, to be the continuity for each other even when everything else is discontinuous or fickle or cruel. I know in my heart that I can live without him and I know in my heart that I don’t want to—that’s a good place to start, right?”
Please, Lily’s brain. BE QUIET.
“But what if Dash doesn’t feel the same way?” “That’s a risk you have to take. This is one of those moments when you get to decide who you want to be. It’s like an awkward, uncomfortable growth spurt, but one that ultimately moves you in a definitive direction. Are you going to be someone who takes charge of her feelings and her actions, even if the outcome might hurt, or someone who lets herself be unhappy simply because she won’t ask for what she wants?”
“People who want things to be perfect are always impossible to please. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Even if their expectations aren’t correct, their instincts are. You won’t get everything right, Dash. Even Lily knows that. The trying is what matters.” “It’s the thought that counts, then.” “Ah, but have you ever tried counting thoughts? They are extraordinarily hard to wrangle.”
“Here’s the thing about love,” Mrs. Basil E. replied. “You get a last chance. And then, when that doesn’t work, you make yourself another last chance. Then another. Then another. You keep going until your last chances run out.”
“She doesn’t realize, either, that this isn’t a last, last chance. She’s also a sapling. But that’s the beauty of your young love—you can learn to be trees together.”
And, yes, there will come a time when you’ll see the story isn’t true. But the intentions behind it? Completely true. The love behind it? Also true.”
What an idiot Santa is for flying around alone. Because who would want to travel the world without another person’s heartbeat beside him?
“There will always be a part of us that’s on a chase, but there has to be another part that knows where our home base is. Our North Pole, as it were. Even if it doesn’t really exist, we can still get there if we agree that it exists. I love you, and it’s driving me crazy to see you so upset. I want to fix it, and I know I can’t. But what I want to do is rewrite the whole world so you can fix it. I want to come up with a story that all the world will choose to celebrate, and in it, the people we love will never get sick, and the people we love will never be sad for long, and there would be
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“I think that maybe by pretending, we find out more about who we really are.
“Anything we want. Any way we want our story to go. This is not the time for reality. Reality can return in January, if it has to. But now—the city is ours for the making.”
“Escape, sure. But it wasn’t so much about getting away, as going to. You can go anywhere in a book. Books are adventure. Knowledge. Possibility. Magic.”
I know it’s not as intense or immediate as it used to be—but that just means that instead of having only a present together, we’re having a past, present, and future all at once.”
We got to the door of the party. Friends, family, and strangers spread before us. There was a music to their conversation—this strange orchestration of good company.
