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Zoe looked at him with concern and made a mental note to never, ever let herself be hurt like that.
“She is warm like the sun.”
“Just one that matters,” said Jiro. “No expectations. No preferences. If you prefer one outcome over another in life, you will likely be disappointed. I prefer nothing and am always surprised.”
If I have no preference, the outcome shows me what is beneficial or harmful in my life. I don’t impose that value.”
That was the thing about New York, Cleo thought as they walked toward the buses. It never knew what you wanted, so it offered you everything.
She was the one in her twenties, she wanted to remind him. He and Frank were in their forties. They had the careers. They had the money. They had the citizenship, the stability, the power. In comparison, she had nothing but herself.
Who was she? An artist who didn’t make art. A wife without a husband. A child with no mother.
Every man, in fact, who had burrowed his way inside her, kissed her and fucked her, come in her, on her. She wanted them out. She wanted a river heavy with men’s bodies sucked out of her. She wanted death by flood.
Fondness was warm but not tepid, the color of amber, more affectionate than friendship but less complicated than love.
Everything she had ever wanted to hear from a man was hers from the mouth of a girl.
“People who feel the need to say ‘I’m fine’ are never fine, sweetheart,” she says.
“What do you do not to feel sad?” I ask. “I let myself feel sad.”
I need to make money. I need to write today. I need to clean the bathroom. I need to eat something. I need to quit sugar. I need to cut my hair. I need to call Verizon. I need to savor the moment. I need to find the library card. I need to learn to meditate. I need to try harder. I need to get that stain out. I need to find better health insurance. I need to discover my signature scent. I need to strengthen and tone. I need to be present in the moment. I need to learn French. I need to be easier on myself. I need to buy organizational storage units. I need to call back. I need to develop a
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I already miss the clinical asepsis of the hospital, where all rebellions of the body are accounted for and hidden.
He doesn’t think of me, or he would have reached out. This whole thing is in my head. Pepper jack.
Days I have held, days I have lost, days that outgrow, like daughters, my harboring arms.
I wait to feel whatever I’m meant to feel, but nothing comes.
“Those are two of the most powerful words in the English language. Right between them is a free and happy life.”
“We break. We put ourselves back together. The cracks are the best part. You don’t have to hide them.”
“You don’t have to pray to God,” he says. “Sometimes it helps just to talk to the air in the room.”
Ah, here is the man I love, I think. The thought comes so swiftly, so unapologetically, I almost say it aloud.
“Like earth. It grounds you. All this nonsense about love being a drug, making you feel high, that’s not real. It should hold you like the earth.”
Eleanor got this version of Frank, the sober, thoughtful man who took her suggestions, while Cleo had endured the drunken predecessor like a fool.
was a relief to live from the inside out at long last.
Now she had completed that process on her own. She had met the darkest part of herself and created this.
She grew up feeling safe and fiercely loved.”
But the people who did get that love, they grew up to be different from us. More secure. Maybe they’re not as shiny or successful as you and I feel we have to be. But it’s not because they’re not interesting. They just don’t feel they have to do the tap dance, you know? They don’t have to prove themselves all the time to be loved. Because they always were.”
‘Wherever you are going, it is waiting for you.’ ”
