More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Nature might outrank nurture when it comes to things like your eye color, and those dimples, and your predisposition to certain diseases.” I snort lightly at that. “But nurture,” she says softly, ignoring me. “Nurture is what makes or breaks us.”
People eat tragedies like ours up like candy.
We settled for what was in front of us, rather than brave trying to find someone new. Someone who lit our souls on fire, rather than just keeping them warm.
Where grief would rather have us cower, submit to its whims, and give up—we fucking spit in its face. Life is for the living, motherfucker.
it’s up to you to climb your way out of this. We can reach down to help, but it’s up to you to grab our hands and let us pull you up.”
“Effort fucking matters, Way.”
“We were always gonna end up here, weren’t we?” “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Inevitable, wouldn’t you say?”
I’d rather feel this burden of knowing and loving you than go even a second without you existing somewhere on this planet.”
“You’re so fucking gorgeous, City Boy. Sorry it took me so long to tell you.”
I’ve always been a little afraid of the dark, and yet… it’s in the dark that I find my courage.
They’re all just life preservers keeping us afloat in an endless sea as we wait for the next wave to pull us under. And if there’s one constant in this life, it’s that there will always be more waves. So long as the earth keeps spinning, and the moon keeps pulling… There will always be more waves.
Does he look back on the trajectory of our lives, and try to pinpoint the moment that would one day lead us here? The defining moment that would alter our paths irrevocably, interweaving our fates so deeply that it feels like if we let this go, we’d never be whole again?
I’ll do whatever it takes to prove I’m not going anywhere. Prove he’s not a whim or a fix or any-fucking-thing else in between. He’s the beat of my fucking heart. And that? That’s everything.
“You said something once,” he adds quietly after a moment. “When you were four or five, maybe? I don’t know, but you were young. I was in town for the weekend, and I was watching you for the night. We were watching some Disney movie, I think? I don’t remember which one, but…” He trails off, inhaling deeply. Frowning, I look up at him. He smiles sadly, searching my gaze. “You asked if boys get princes too.”
“I might fuck up,” my uncle tells me bluntly. “Clearly, ‘cause I already did. But I’m… I’m tryin’, and I’m learnin’, so please, just please bear with me. Tell me when I fuck up, teach me, but…” He gives me a sad smile. “Give me a chance to be better.”
Apologies are useless in hindsight. They don’t change a goddamn thing. They’re just empty words to fill the silence between one regret and the next.
“So why the fuck are you wasting time? You’re both punishing yourselves, and for what? Shit you never had any control over?
Even the sun needs a break sometimes—it’s why it has the moon to help out every night.”
Inhale. Exhale… Then— “I love you.” He freezes. I choke out on a laugh. “Christ, man. That’s gotta be what this is, right? This feeling… like I’m being ripped apart from the inside out. Like I’m dying. Like I… like I literally can’t breathe from it.” My voice catches, breaking off like glass. “All there’s left in me is… is you, and I don’t even know if that makes sense. But it’s you. It’s always been you.”
“But it is what it is,” I tell him simply. “Take it or leave it, because I refuse to water it down, even for you. I’d do just about anything for you, but don’t ever ask me to love you less.”
“Just like that Harry guy you used to be obsessed with. From that boy band… something, something Direction.”
“It’s not your job to love who brought you into this world unconditionally. It’s the other way around. You don’t owe me anything.”
it’s one thing to create art. But it’s another to make people feel your art. To convey it in such a way that it burrows into the little nooks and crannies of another human’s soul, and unearths the pieces left forgotten. Pieces they might not have had the strength to face before, not until a book, a painting, or a song gave them permission to do so.
a world where fame is almost synonymous with exploitation,
“I’ve always liked dreary, overcast days better,” I tell him. He snorts gently. “Of course. Why am I not surprised?” I nod. “Sun’s still out, though. It’s still there. But it’s like… it’s giving up the pretense that everything’s okay, you know? It’s still there, because it has to be, but…” He watches me intently. Shrugging, I say, “I don’t know. Just ignore me. I’m still sex-drunk and I’m not making any sense.” “No, no, I get it.” He smiles sadly. “Just ’cause the sun’s out, doesn’t mean everything’s okay. And it’s, well, okay to not be okay…”
“Every day,” he whispers against my lips a second later. “I’ll prove to you every day I’m not going anywhere. Even… even if it gets to be too much sometimes, I’ll always, always find my way back to you.”
My tolerance for peopling is at an all-time low these days, it would seem. After months—years, really—of relying on some kind of substance to take the edge off, I realize I have no idea how the hell other people do it. Just raw-dogging their way through life like it’s not this constant cheese grater on their sanity.
Coming to terms with the fact you need someone like air is never easy at first—it’s jarring. Unnatural. Like opening your eyes underwater.
“I’d rather give every little piece of myself to you,” he goes on roughly, “than wonder what could have been because society says it’s wrong. Too much. Toxic.”
“I feel bad for those who never find what we have. But I feel even worse for those who do and never let themselves love as much as I love you.”
It’s a constant battle at this point—this give, give, give of ours, with very little taking. Always putting the other first… But maybe that’s the secret. No one loses when the only objective is to out-love the other.
