Waiting for the Flood (Spires, #2)

by Alexis Hall

You don’t really fall in love with a house. You fall in love with the life you could have in it.

Life is so full of rough edges—small tasks and expectations that scratch you bloody and remind you that you’re naked and alone.

This is the story of my life: standing on the edges of things and worrying, when I’m supposed to just walk through them.

It’s all I’ve ever wanted, really. Someone to make tea for. To know how they like to drink it, and share some pieces of time with them at the end of long days, and short ones, good days and bad, and everything in between.

The violence of loss had become an ache which had faded into something else entirely: simply an awareness of absence, not even necessarily of a person, but of a life I thought I’d had.

“You know, Edwin,” said Mrs. Chankseliani, “family is really just whoever sticks around.”

“Everyone’s mysterious before you know them.” “But w-when you know me, I won’t be mysterious anymore.” “Yeah, you’ll be you, and that’ll be better.”