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March 26 - March 30, 2022
“Does it matter what it’s called?” He genuinely didn’t know, had indeed deliberately avoided thinking about what it might mean to find love and companionship and desire all in the same person, because to form that thought would mean to acknowledge a future he would never have.
He tended to think that when the Bible condemned something practically everyone did, whether it be tossing oneself off or eating pork, there was likely some nuance that had been lost either to history or to translation.
The vicar seemed to have his own personal ray of sunshine following him about, casting light in his path and drawing people to him, while Phillip was ever under a storm cloud.
“You cannot shackle yourself for life to a person you don’t love.”
You cannot marry someone you don’t wish to take to bed.”
If there was a way to resist this man, he hadn’t found it.
This wanting felt like such a part of Ben’s soul that it had to mean something, had to carry with it its own kind of moral gravity.
“We’d better have a couple layers of fabric between us at all times, vicar.”
😂😂😂
Alice always told him he had the aesthetic sensibilities of an infant: he liked summer, and baby animals, and fruit tarts.
Peace, Ben knew, was a series of small things, each insignificant but together making landmarks for a life:
But that was just the trouble—the more he thought, the clearer it was that he didn’t want a life that didn’t include soft kisses and steady hands, whispered praise and shared touches.
He would never again enter into an arrangement where convenience outweighed honesty,
If we can all quietly agree that eating pork and shaving aren’t sinful, I don’t see why we can’t extend that same grace to men like us.”
That tell me felt like jumping into a lake that wasn’t filled with mere cold water but with sea monsters and thorns and perils he couldn’t even name. It wasn’t a question. It was an invitation.
“When we’re together it feels right.
This man was the antidote to chilliness.
He was a counterweight to Phillip’s natural inclination to aloofness.
Aw
“You can hit me if it’ll make you feel better,”
“Am I that easy to read?”
“Did you ever think that maybe you deserved better?”
“We both know that’s impossible.” “No,” Ben said, his fists clenched at his sides. “We don’t.”
Society always dictates yet never had grounds
This was some unholy combination of desire and friendship and something else, because apparently when you took workaday lust and combined it with affection and threw in garden-variety honesty, you got something new and totally different.
He hadn’t realized that this other kind of love, the kind he felt for Phillip, had so much in common with falling off a cliff. He couldn’t stop loving Phillip any more than he could stop gravity.
Phillip didn’t know how he would get by without seeing Ben every day,
He needed Ben near him, with him.
😫😪
And he’d protect Ben.
😭
Damn Sedgwick and his easy charm and his general loveliness for ruining Phillip’s peace of mind.
This was insanity. Puppy love. Midsummer madness. He didn’t even know what to call it, only that his head wasn’t on straight. And that it was Sedgwick’s fault.
Oh men and their emotions
“Is that what we did? Join our souls?”
“I think we’ve been doing that for weeks.”
He wanted to belong here, to belong to his children and to Ben.
“The important thing, Mr. Sedgwick says, is to remember that during brown studies our minds are not particularly honest. That if you want to know the truth, you need to wait.”
“Until we were together, I hadn’t really understood what it meant to love a person,
😍
“I can’t be there without you. It would break my heart, Phillip.”
😍😭
I love you, and it will kill a part of me to sit at your table as your guest, knowing we’ll be parted in weeks.”
😭
“I want to be with you, and I don’t care how. The details don’t matter to me.”
😭😳😫
