Code Name Hélène

by Ariel Lawhon

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. —VICTOR HUGO, LES MISÉRABLES

expect to feel something at his touch as well, and I am not disappointed. But it isn’t a physical tingling or an elevated heart rate. Nothing so melodramatic. It is internal. Emotional. Once my hand is wrapped firmly in his, I feel…calm. My entire frenetic self begins to idle. As though I’ve been given permission to rest.

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Love is a choice. It is the active choosing of good for another person.

The friendships of women are strange and wonderful. Fraught and irreplaceable.