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finding someone you can laugh with when everything hurts—was the stuff happily ever afters were made of.
The kiss is hot and sweet and ravenous. This, this must be how forever tastes. I’m sure of it.
Grief is a grind. It is the work of breathing and waking and rising and moving through a world that feels emptier. A gaping hole has been torn into your existence, and everyone around you just walks right past it like it’s not even there.
I can’t decide I don’t want him and then that no one should. The cold reality of this truth settles on my chest like a block of ice, and for the rest of the night, it’s easy not to laugh.
When you lose someone that close, the enormity, the finality of it, sometimes hits you full force when you least expect it. When you are least prepared. And your heartbeat stutters and your knees nearly buckle, just like when you first heard they were gone.
It’s in these unguarded moments that the pain hisses and growls, a rabid beast with its face pressed to the bars. But I hold the whip and chair. I keep the lock and key.
It was messy and hot and it felt like the movies, when the two people who belong together find each other and collide. They combust. They stare at one another in awe because what are the odds that you find this ever in a lifetime?
The air sizzles with a lightning strike, sudden and hot and dangerous. Unpredictable. I should take shelter, but I don’t step back.
The first time I kissed him. The first time we made love, confessed our love, voices hoarse in the after-fuck glow of twisted sheets, of tangled arms and legs, of kiss-bruised lips. We had the kind of chemistry that burned everywhere it touched—skin, bed, hearts. Nothing was safe, and if there is one thing I want to be after my last few perilous years, it’s safe.
Nothing has ever meant nothing between us.
They share an easy intimacy that’s as tried and warm as a blanket you’ve had for years and still treasure.
“I watched the two of you all through lunch stealing glances at each other when you thought no one was looking. Maybe a second chance?”
“I was no walk in the park, Merry.” “Who wants to walk in the park? I think that man would run wild with you.”
Omggggg
We couldn’t make it home. Josiah had pulled into the abandoned lot when it was late and there was no one around because we had to have each other. Urgent heat had burned through common sense and caution.
He is mine tonight. This is a conversation so long overdue, and this is just for us and no one else. Only ours. The intimacy of sorrow for the life we made together and lost.
Every sense convenes between our lips, and all I can do is taste the whiskey and want on his tongue. “Yas,” he expels my name on
He doesn’t have to fumble or search or guess. His body knows mine.
It was like old times, but even better. Apparently absence makes the heart grow horny.
Dr. Abrams says honesty is medicine to the soul. I’ll have to ask her the remedy for a lie.
In his arms, I feel like his girl again.
What a difference a year can make, and in just a few minutes, we get a brand-new one. As long as you have a new year, you have another chance.”
He holds me like forever was never promised and like nothing is inevitable.
No one has ever felt like that before or since, and I suspect no one ever will. Not just how it felt being inside of her, but how it felt. How it felt like coming home and running wild at the same damn time.
I’m in love with every version of Josiah I’ve ever known, and I’m certain the man he’ll become will also hold my heart.
I don’t say it aloud, but surely she knows she’s ruined me for everyone else.
Our traumas, the things that injure us in this life, even over time, are not always behind us. Sometimes they linger in the smell of a newborn baby. They surprise us in the taste of a home-cooked meal. They wait in the room at the end of the hall. They are with us. They are present. And there are some days when memories feel more real than those who remain, than the joys of this world.
I fell in love with Yasmen a little more, a little deeper, every time she took me into her body, showed me how passion burns your tongue when you taste it.
That love and life occur just beyond the reach of our control.
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Have more children with you. Fight with you. Make up with you. Wake up beside you every day.”
I’ve learned that life isn’t about taking what you deserve, it’s about getting all you can while you can because it’s short. Because it’s fickle. Because it takes when we least expect it.
There are a million words I could utter to assure him he never has to worry about me wavering, but with an uncontainable joy and a teary smile, I choose one. “Yes.”
