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Don’t be so tied up trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.”
There are people who see a beautiful flower and rush over to pick it. They want to hold it in their hands, they want to own it. They want the flower’s beauty to be theirs, to be within their possession, their control. Don wasn’t like that. At least, not at first. Don was happy to be near the flower, to look at the flower, to appreciate the flower simply being.
You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.
People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is “You’re safe with me”—that’s intimacy.
I love you too much to let you live only for me.”
“It’s not wrong,” Celia said. “It shouldn’t be wrong, to love you. How can it be wrong?” “It’s not wrong, sweetheart. It’s not,” I said. “They’re wrong.”
people were put on earth to find other people, and I was put here to find you. To find you and touch your skin and smell your breath and hear all your thoughts. But I don’t think that’s true anymore.”
I was a lesbian when she loved me and a straight woman when she hated me.
And taking pride in your beauty is a damning act. Because you allow yourself to believe that the only thing notable about yourself is something with a very short shelf life.”
I made it fifty-fifty. Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.
Some marriages aren’t really that great. Some loves aren’t all-encompassing. Sometimes you separate because you weren’t that good together to begin with. Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.
“And to anyone tempted to kiss the TV tonight, please don’t chip your tooth.”
I saw what I had both feared and yet not truly believed possible. Harry was slumped over the steering wheel. I looked over and saw a younger man in the passenger’s seat.
“But if you have to go, then go. Go if it hurts. Go if it’s time. Just go knowing you were loved, that I will never forget you, that you will live in everything Connor and I do. Go knowing I love you purely, Harry, that you were an amazing father. Go knowing I told you all my secrets. Because you were my best friend.”
I missed the only man I’d ever loved with any lasting meaning.
when I thought about trying to live a day without him, when I thought of a world without Harry Cameron.
She was in my arms. In our bed. It was summer. The windows were open to let in the breeze. The room smelled of sickness, but if you focused hard enough, you could still smell the salt from the ocean. Her eyes went still.
THAT’S HOW MY STORY ENDS. With the loss of everyone I have ever loved.
Say to them, “Evelyn Hugo just wants to go home. It’s time for her to go to her daughter, and her lover, and her best friend, and her mother.” Tell them Evelyn Hugo says good-bye.
“Harry had fallen in love with a Black man. His name was James Grant. He died on February 26, 1989.”
But this. The knowledge that my father never willingly got behind the wheel of a car drunk, that he was left dead on the side of the road by this woman, framed for his own death, his legacy tarnished. The fact that I grew up believing he’d been the one to cause the accident. There is so much blame hanging in the air, waiting for me to snatch it and pin it on Evelyn’s chest.
Knowing to look for it, knowing there are all different types of great loves out there, is enough for me for now.
