The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy (Hart and Mercy, #1)

by Megan Bannen

For what it’s worth, I feel better for having written it, to have applied the weight of my loneliness to a piece of paper rather than to my own heart for a change.

coffee tastes like the sum total of humanity’s bitterness brewed into a brackish swill to be slurped with a grimace.

“So basically, you want a girlfriend without having to put in the work of being a decent person in her presence.

“I want to be with someone who asks me how my day was, someone who finds what I have to say interesting. I want to be with someone who thinks that—I don’t know—that I’m kind of special. That’s all.”

The bar is so low for women. How sad.

He set the letter on his bare cot, sat on the other end, and stared at the unopened symbol of his unfinished business with Mercy. His whole life was like this letter, a series of goodbyes that never happened, a line from his past to his present that he could draw in his mind with a thick-nibbed pen

“I think I’m about to do something stupid.” “Okay.” Mercy stood on tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth on the exact spot where the frosting had been.

“You say, ‘I’m a girl,’ but the gods know you never had much of a chance to be anything other than a full-grown woman. And what a remarkable woman you are.

Fuck it. Professionalism is for people who are not in love with Mercy Birdsall.

He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her cold cream as she nestled her head into the real estate of his body she had claimed as hers, as if she didn’t already own everything he was, body and soul.

He figured that if he could no longer love Mercy in person, he could at least love her through the pages of her favorite novel.

I could tell you that my favorite color is yellow, because your favorite color is yellow.

I’m in tears 😭

I walked into Birdsall & Son and found a woman there who was color and light and joy in a world that had come to seem colorless and dismal and lousy to me.

He bent down to kiss her. “Hello, Merciful.” She smiled at him, dimples and all. “Hello, Sweet-Hart.”