The Listeners

by Maggie Stiefvater

Toad, paused in the doorway, gave him a knowing look. “I don’t have time to solve your problems, Agent. You and I both got dogs we need to be kicking.”

So the only choices were married to a dead wife or to an estranged one, and recent widowers slept around more.

He didn’t know that he always ran away from conflict, like a gentle stream taking the easiest path around rocks.

a good kiss erases doubt.

“You just want me to cosign whatever you’ve already decided.

He lowered his eyelids. She saw him snagging his line again and again on the memories of wrong choices lurking in the deep.

“Everything,” he replied. “I want to be what makes you smile when we come home to each other and I want to be what makes you settle under a full moon and I want to be what makes you wild when I’m gone and I want to be what makes you laugh when I’m inside you and I want to be what makes you weep when I die and I want to be everything else in between and I want to take you out into the world and see it with you, but if it has to be here, then here is where I land.”