More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Hennessy would rather bleed out than date a boring white man in last year’s suit.
But joy is a small, tenacious crop, especially in soil that hasn’t grown any for a long time, and so it lingered with him as he checked his watch to see when Matthew was due back
His dreams the night before had been antsy, fractured, Bryde-less. His morning after was antsy, fractured, Adam-less.
Ronan lifted the gun. “Jesus, Ronan, it’s me!” The kitchen overhead light came on and revealed Adam Parrish, removing a motorcycle helmet. He eyed the gun. “You know how to take a surprise well.”
“Is it as bad leaving as it is coming? Because if so I’m staying here forever.”
He said, “Ronan, I know you.” He said it just the same way he’d said it on the phone the night before. Ronan’s adrenaline melted out of him.
“I’m convinced. Only you would listen to sociology notes on a motorcycle.”
They hugged, hard. It was shocking to hold him. The truth of him was right there beneath Ronan’s hands, and it still seemed impossible. He smelled like the leather of the thrift store jacke...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The idea of Adam Parrish on a motorcycle was more than enough birthday present for Ronan; he was senselessly turned on.
They hugged again, merrily, waltzing messily in the kitchen, and kissed, merrily, waltzing more.
“I’m starving. I need to eat. I need to take off your clothes. But first, I want to look at Bryde.”
There were all sorts of dreamt lights at the Barns: fireflies in the fields, stars tangled in the trees, orbs hanging in the long barn over his work, eternal wee candles in each of the windows that faced the backyard.
It was an eerie image: this gaunt young man poised over the sun, his gaze unflinching and blank, something about the hang of his shoulders indicating vacancy.
Adam’s mind wheeled, untethered, through infinite dreamspace. Wherever it was, it didn’t recall Adam Parrish, Harvard student; Adam Parrish, Henrietta-born; Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch’s lover.
“It’s not Bryde,” Adam said finally. “The something, it’s not Bryde.” “How do you know?” Adam said, “Because whatever it is, it’s afraid of him.”
It struck Ronan then that he didn’t want Adam to go. For many reasons: beginning with the bad feeling of that scream, proceeding through the way his body would miss Adam’s when he curled in his bed,
“Break will be here in just a few days,” Adam said. He kissed Ronan’s cheek, lightly, and then Ronan’s mouth. “I’m coming back. Be here for me.” “Tamquam—” Ronan said. “—alter idem.”
Historically, the law was kinder to those who forged brushstrokes of all kinds instead of pen marks of any kind.
Hennessy found out when the property manager called to follow up a week later. Jordan hadn’t said anything to explain herself. Hennessy said, “I’d leave me, too.”
In the dream, Ronan stood in Lindenmere, lovely Lindenmere. His forest. His protector and his protected. The trees were massive and shaggy, green and orange lichen scaling their northern sides. Between them, boulders tumbled over one another, moss softening their edges. Mist moved darkly between the trunks, gray, shaggy breath from words just spoken into the air. The sound of water was omnipresent: rivers flowing, waterfalls hushing, rain pattering. Mushrooms and flowers ventured between stumps and fallen logs.
In some places, it looked beautiful and ordinary. In other places, it was beautiful and extraordinary. It was perhaps the purest expression of Ronan’s imagination.
There are dragons sleeping underground who will never stir again. “I don’t want a monologue,” Ronan said. All around us the world is falling asleep, but no one’s looking out their window anymore to mark it.
What is a dream without its dreamer? It’s an animal in a room without air. It’s man on a dead planet. It’s religion without a god. They sleep without us because they must.
Bryde whispered, “Better drive like the fucking wind, boy.”
Why do you only paint what other people have already painted? Declan Lynch had asked. Because her brush had already come pre-loaded with someone else’s palette.
“I know you’re a dreamer,” he said. All the air she thought she’d gotten into her lungs felt like it had vanished. He paused. His lips were parted to say something else, but he didn’t. The words were right there, queued up, but he didn’t let them free. Finally, he said, “And I am, too.”
I don’t do drugs, Salvador Dalí once said. I am drugs.
“Fuck you very much,” he said, and stretched. All the girls laughed at him, with both surprise and something else, something less definable. Jordan could tell they were excited. Optimistic. Today, they looked like her, rather than Hennessy.
Declan wasn’t a huggable Lynch, but Matthew had never cared. He’d hugged him anyway.
“If I was Dad’s, I’d be asleep,” Matthew said. “So I must be one of Ronan’s.”
They got me down on the ground and they had a foot on my neck, a boot, just like this, and a gun right here, just like this, and they told me they were going to kill me. You know what I thought?” I’ve never lived my own life, thought Jordan. “This is the most boring thing to do on my back,” guessed Hennessy.
sometimes when Mags woke up she thought they were girls again. It wasn’t a good thought, though. It always made her think, Oh no, now I have to do it all again.
A thump was a good thing to wake you in the night, Mags thought, a solid choice, classical.
Getting into a car with a girl from the Fairy Market. Just for tonight, he thought. He’d go back to being dull as soon as the sun came up.
“I don’t know who lives here,” Jordan confessed, “but I love them. In my mind, they’re old lovers who can’t stand to live with each other but can’t stand to live entirely without, and so they keep this place as a sort of pact to see each other for one week each season.”
Park your bum,” she said, and gestured to the armchair opposite her. “How?” “With your arse and glutes.”
Mostly he remembered being a cloud. It was very peaceful. No one expected much from a cloud but for it to do what it was made to do. He could hear the little pattering of the precipitation down below. “Are you going to do that all night?” Bryde asked. Ronan didn’t reply, because he was a cloud.
“He thinks I’m a liar.” “Then perhaps,” Bryde said, “you shouldn’t have lied.”
“Mum?” Hennessy said. “You won’t miss me,” Hennessy’s mother said. “Wait,” Hennessy said. The gun barrel flashed.
Hennessy raised an eyebrow and shot back her own silence, which was less nuanced. It said something along the lines of Sorry, man, bluster’s all I got because I’m scared shitless and dying. Sad violins, said Ronan’s silence.
Ronan looked at her with his heavy silence. It said, Get the fuck out of here we’re having a private conversation. She patted his hand. “You remind me of my boy,” she said fondly, and withdrew.
“Honey, you okay?” asked Wendy comfortingly. Through a hiccup of shaky tears, Hennessy managed to say, “I’m having his baby. Can I have an orange juice?”
When I asked him why, he said it was because it saw him. Seemed like that was probably the worst thing he could imagine.”
“And I can’t,” Ronan said. “Not by myself. How do you feel about trees?”
There was a pair of open scissors resting directly on the inner floor mat. This was Nathan’s symbol, his obsession. He hung scissors over his own bed as a child, and also over Farooq-Lane’s until she made him take them down.
Farooq-Lane took his right hand. “I’m here.” He whispered, “I am not tired of you.”
Declan texted him: You leaving me to deal with Matthew today? and Ronan answered with only Dad’s working, sweetie.
Declan went on, “And now we can be open with you about why you’ve never had a real school physical or anything.” “Wait, why?” Declan regretted saying anything. “In case you don’t have internal organs.”
“This painting isn’t of Aurora,” Declan said. “It’s of Mór Ó Corra, and she is my mother.”
Ronan texted someone as they were walking. Hennessy saw only that the contact was labeled MANAGEMENT. “Who’s that?” “Adam,” Ronan said. “I’m telling him I’m going in so that he’ll know where to find me if days go by.” Days?
