Still Me (Me Before You #3)

by Jojo Moyes

there it was across the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan, shining like a million jagged shards of light, awe-inspiring, glossy, impossibly condensed and beautiful, a sight that was so familiar from television and films that I couldn’t quite accept I was seeing it for real.

(I am drinking New York coffee in a New York coffeehouse! I am walking along a New York street! Like Meg Ryan! Or Diane Keaton! I am in actual New York!)

for those few minutes, my mouth full of unfamiliar food, my eyes filled with strange sights, I existed only in the moment. I was fully present, my senses alive, my whole being open to receive the new experiences around me. I was in the only place in the world I could possibly be.

At the end of a lead a wheezy pug, with bulbous eyes, gazed at me belligerently (at least I thought it was gazing at me: it was hard to be sure as its eyes veered off in different directions).

backed swiftly into my room and closed the door, my heart thumping in my ears so loudly that I was sure they must be able to hear it.

“People change,” I said hopefully. “Over time.” “No. I don’t think is possible.” Agnes’s expression was briefly wistful. Then she shrugged. “But on bright side, they are quite old. Maybe some of them will die soon.”

If someone likes you, they will stay with you; if they don’t like you enough to stay with you, they aren’t worth being with anyway.

You shut a library, Louisa, you don’t just shut down a building, you shut down hope.”

“But it is a long time since I believed love solved everything.”

“I think you’ll like her.” “Then I’m sure I will.” Like I’d like Ebola virus. Or grating off my own elbows. Or maybe eating that cheese that has live bugs in it.

I wanted him to leave. I thought I might die if he did.

And we immigrants know this more than anyone. You always have one foot in two places. You can never be truly happy because, from the moment you leave, you are two selves, and wherever you are one half of you is always calling to the other. This is our price, Louisa. This is the cost of who we are.”

“You know,” he said, almost to himself, “I have a feeling about us, Louisa Clark. And I’m never wrong about these things.”

All this nonsense about women having it all. We never could and we never shall. Women always have to make the difficult choices. But there is a great consolation in simply doing something you love.”

I decided to handle the situation in as mature a way as possible and simply refuse to acknowledge his presence, peering intently instead at the plates of sandwiches, in the manner of someone who had only recently been introduced to the concept of food.

“Any man lucky enough to be your date shouldn’t give a fig if you come out in a trash bag and galoshes.”

I thought about how you’re shaped so much by the people who surround you, and how careful you have to be in choosing them for this exact reason, and then I thought, despite all that, in the end maybe you have to lose them all in order to truly find yourself.

There are so many versions of ourselves we can choose to be.

There is a great consolation in simply doing something you love.