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When you start with the best, the future offers only disappointment.
There is nothing more terrible, she has decided, than the ferocity with which humans can love.
It’s his gaze, his grin, his energy—they grab her. Is there a better way to describe it? She’s in thrall. This, she thinks, is love at first sight.
Here is Celeste floating on her back, staring at the stars, thinking that outer space is a mystery but not as much of a mystery as the universe of human emotion.
Her mind kept returning to the sight of Bruce lifting Robin’s pant leg at the knee. The gesture had seemed so familiar, nearly intimate.
How idyllic life would be out here. You spent all day at the beach, rinsed off under the outdoor shower, grilled a striped bass that you had caught yourself surf-casting a hundred yards away. At night, your neighbors wandered over to share an ice-cold beer or a gin and tonic while you all gazed up at the stars and listened to the pounding surf. Rainy days would mean cards, board games, or a good paperback mystery read in a comfortable old chair.
Celeste doesn’t care. Shooter’s absence is more powerful than Benji’s presence.
You lost, she thinks, gloating for a second. But then she corrects herself. They both lost.
Having Reverend Derby around always lent the family a certain moral authority, although none of the four Winburys is particularly religious. Or Benji isn’t. He understands he can’t speak for anyone else’s interior life, but his life has been so blessed—up to this point—that he has had no need for religion.
And yet, Karen could tell from the girl’s demeanor that no one had been looking out for her, not even from afar.
She doesn’t ask Shooter where they’re going. She doesn’t care. She would follow him anywhere.
My feelings for you are tragic; they’re Shakespearean—I’m not sure which play, some combination of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, I think.
I’m in love with you. If you don’t feel the same way, I will still go to my grave feeling grateful for every second I have had with you.
🥹🥹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Nothing, as it turns out, can take the place of love.
He decides he will keep the picture of himself with Celeste. It arrived like an anonymous gift from the universe; when Shooter looks at it, he will remember that he finally has something in his life worth waiting for. He will remember that she said yes.
Where is the ring? There it is. She sees it. Like love, she thinks, it is just beyond her reach.
