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they all watched another plane burrow into the side of the other tower, the tower that wasn’t already on fire. The newscasters were reacting much like the students in the class--shocked, confused, scrambling for something intelligent to say as they stared with dawning horror at what was clearly not an accident.
Where Fern had always lost herself in romance, Bailey lost himself in history.
“Everybody is a main character to someone,” Bailey theorized, winding his way through the busy hall and out the nearest exit into the November afternoon. “There are no minor characters.
Fern shook off the old memory. Funny how some things stuck with you.
And that’s how Fern Taylor started writing love notes to Ambrose Young.
Back and forth they went, asking and answering, and it felt a little like undressing--removing the unimportant things first, the jacket, the earrings, the baseball cap. Before long, buttons were undone, zippers were sliding down, and clothes were falling to the floor. Fern’s heart would flutter and her breaths grew short with every barrier crossed, every piece of metaphorical clothing discarded.
whether or not they chose to take a step into the unknown, the unknown would still come,
being uncool was better than missing out.
Sometimes life seemed particularly unfair, unduly harsh, and beyond bearing.
“But that’s the cool thing about friendship. It’s not about being perfect, or even being deserving.
he had labored with one goal: love and serve—the rest would take care of itself.
The key was to write something that would make him smile—something that he would know was meant for him—without cluing anyone else in and without making herself feel like an idiot. She struggled with the words for two days. Everything from “Hi. Glad you’re back!” to “I couldn’t care less if your face isn’t perfect, I still want to have your babies.” Neither seemed quite right. And then she knew what she would do.
Ambrose wondered suddenly if spying would qualify as a “new pursuit.”
we’ve been getting complaints from the produce section. Seems the carrots have formed a Bailey Sheen fan club. Tonight is for the fans. Fern’s got quite a following in the frozen foods.”
Fern was grateful she had been a late bloomer—small, plain, ignored. In some ways, her ugly duckling status had been like a force field, keeping the world at bay so she could grow, come into her own, and figure out that there was more to her than the way she looked.
“If Bailey had been born without MD, he wouldn’t be Bailey. The Bailey who is smart and sensitive, and seems to understand so many things we don’t.
On the inside, Bailey looks like Michelangelo’s David. And when I look at him, and when you look at him, that’s what we see.”
the handsome didn’t quite cover the scum beneath, and sometimes the scum seeped through and oozed out around the edges.
Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
You read smutty romance novels and quote scripture. I’m not quite sure I have you figured out.” “Scripture comforts me, and romance novels give me hope.”
She had fallen in love with Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables and was hungry to fall in love like that over and over again.
One kiss wasn’t going to be nearly enough.
have no pride left, Ambrose!” Bailey said. “No pride. But it was my pride or my life. I had to choose. So do you. You can have your pride and sit here and make cupcakes and get old and fat and nobody will give a damn after a while. Or you can trade that pride in for a little humility and take your life back.”
Books allow you to be whoever you want to be, to escape yourself for a while.
He was partially blind, but in spite of that, maybe because of that, he was seeing things more clearly than he ever had before.
I wrote your name across my heart, So we could be together So I could hold you close to me And keep you there forever.
sleep would not come and her grief was amplified by her loneliness.
“Think about it. There isn’t heartache if there hasn’t been joy. I wouldn’t feel loss if there hadn’t been love. You couldn’t take my pain away without removing Bailey from my heart. I would rather have this pain now than never have known him. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.”
“True beauty, the kind that doesn’t fade or wash off, takes time. It takes pressure. It takes incredible endurance. It is the slow drip that makes the stalactite, the shaking of the Earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that breaks up the rocks and smooths the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would otherwise never exist. “And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can’t see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in
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