The Royal We (Royal We, #1)

by Heather Cocks

the Keats poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” about how the breath right before you kiss your beloved is the sweetest one of all, because you realize you’re about to get exactly what you want.

I remember once waiting for the Tube and thinking, as its oncoming headlights gleamed brighter in the tunnel, I could just jump. Not because I wanted to die, but because sometimes your mind dangles the worst-case behavior in front of you specifically so that you can be aware that you’re choosing to resist it.

I remember understanding what a brutal thing it is to be the bearer of truly bad news—to break off a piece of that misery and hand it to other people, one by one, and then have to comfort them; to put their grief on your shoulders on top of all your own; to be the calm one in the face of their shock and tears. And then learning that relative weight of grief is immaterial. Being smothered a little is no different than being smothered a lot. Either way, you can’t breathe.

“That’s marvelous,” he said, “except that I’ve no interest in being off the hook. I came here thinking I could just hug you and give you this possibly terrible lasagna I tried to make, but when I touched you, it was like I’d finally woken up after sleepwalking for two years.”

don’t know why it takes something monumentally destructive to remind you what you want to save.

This was not the life I would have chosen, but Nick would always be the person.