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The father you knew never existed anyway.
I folded my arms. “I don’t know you.” “Unlike the North Bear Shores Uber driver, with whom you’re quite close.”
He has a whole RACK of vintage hats!!!
Happy endings don’t happen to everyone. There’s nothing you can do to make someone keep loving you.
I mean, your mom didn’t leave when your dad cheated on her, and my mom didn’t leave my dad when he broke my fucking arm, and yet I couldn’t do anything to make my wife stay.”
No one had chosen Gus. From the time he was a kid, no one had chosen him, and he was embarrassed by that, like it meant something about him. I wanted to tell him it didn’t. That it wasn’t because he was broken, but because everyone else was.
“I want to know you,” I told him. “I want that,” he murmured into my hair.
What if they make you play Uno and drink whiskey-Cokes on their porch???!
“You can take my life,” I yelped, dodging his hands, “you can take my freedom, but you’ll never take this goddamn yearbook from me, Gus.” “I would much rather just have the yearbook,”
“I just remembered what you said about the bookshelf,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You can’t even stop roasting me when I’m losing my mind over your body.”
In my own story, I didn’t want to be the heroine who let some silly miscommunication derail something obviously good,
God bless
glancing at me for the first time in the last two hours.
Isn’t that always the way when you’re pining? You count how long it’s been. How long have they been hurting you?
“I feel so stupid,” I whimpered. “I thought you really—”
We love communication!
Tell me what you want, Gus. Not why you can’t have it, or what you think I want, or why you can’t give that to me. Just tell me what you want for once. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”
God, that’s a mood.
“I’m trapped in a marriage with a woman who lives with another man, just waiting to be done. I’m on medicine. I’m in therapy. I’m trying to give up smoking for good and even to learn how to meditate—and while that’s going on, while I’m a walking dumpster fire, I want you in a way I’m not sure either of us can handle. I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want to feel what it would be like to lose you.”
Communi-fucking-cation!!!
I like how this book seems pretty self aware and is avoiding some of those common tropes - Gus isn’t all “I told you I don’t do feelings” while giving her mixed signals. He’s giving her mixed signals because he himself is conflicted
“I think it was time for you to fall in love,” she said. “All this time I’ve known you and I’ve never gotten to see it. I think it was time.”
I like that Shadi wants January to be happy and is encouraging her to be in love. It’s not that stereotyped “your hurt my friend once so now you must die”
“You’re wrong that you never saw that with me,” I said, and Shadi cocked her head thoughtfully. “That’s how I felt when I found you.”
