Parallel (Parallel, #1)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

sometimes I wonder how I got this lucky, like it’s just a matter of time before you figure out you could do so much better than me.”

I have an amazing girlfriend. I shouldn’t be dreaming about someone else.

I feel a pull toward her I can’t explain, and the fact that she’s clearly with the guy beside her matters not at all.

“I think…no matter what universe we land in, we land there together.”

😭😭😭

But I also know that you’re the person I was born for, and I don’t want to wait to start our lives together.”

he’s the person I’ve waited my entire life to find. To belong to.

I’m seeing the life I might have had,

a life-altering conversation held while drunk, recalled only in small flashes the next day.

because he knew what I was thinking when no one else did. I miss being understood.

fuck this is good

There is something about the two of us that seems to survive all things.

I’ve found someone who remembers every anniversary and doesn’t even seem to realize other women exist.

Like an idiot, like a teen with a crush, I begin blushing.

Except spending a morning with Quinn was like being exposed to sunlight after an entire lifetime beneath fluorescent lights.

I’m not sure, now, that I can be happy with less.

It’s like a really engrossing TV show that’s just ended on a cliffhanger, and I’m desperate to know what comes next.

As if we are no longer part of a team, but two entities that merely coexist.

I need to make it stop, whatever it is, but I don’t want it to stop.

but I assure myself there’s nothing inappropriate in what I’m doing.

I hope some time away from Quinn will make my feelings for Meg return to what they were,

this sense of ease in our conversation I don’t have with other people, not even friends I’ve known all my life.

I want to stay mad at him, but I can’t.

Each time I grow closer to Nick, I’m pushing him away.

There’s just a certain way I want to feel before I get serious with someone, and it’s not there with us.

it. I don’t know what’s going on with us, but I feel like I can’t do anything right with you now.”

“Because I want to feel the way I do around you, and I’m not willing to settle for less than that. And you shouldn’t be settling for less either.”

If I buckle down, if I avoid Nick from now on and focus, could I be happy with what we have again?

“Does this mean you’re mine now?” She smiles up at me. “I think maybe I always was.”