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I guess sometimes you just get an idea of a person in your mind, and that’s what you see when you look at him, no matter what.
“Well, I’m in the middle of this great book, so I took a bartending break to see what happens next, but I’m pretty sure Duncan might be getting lucky.”
stark contrast between the two lol
“You’re okay?” He was frowning at me. “I’m always okay,” I said. “Nobody’s always okay.”
I just wanted to be good at this. And competent. And tough. And, ultimately, just: anybody but me. I was tired of being a disaster. I was tired of being a trampled-on flower. I wanted to be awesome. That wasn’t too much, was it?
“I liked that smile you gave me back there, by the way,” he said, out of nowhere. It startled me to hear his voice. “What smile?” He waved in the direction of the city behind us. “Back in town. You gave me a smile.” “Did I?” I asked. “I didn’t mean to.” “I know,” he said. “That made it even better.” “Okay.” “Think I’ll get another one?” he asked. “Because that thing was like sunshine.”
“I vow to keep my pants on,” he said, offering a little salute. “Unless you command me otherwise.”
“Everybody needs help with something.”
That must have been what made it so intoxicating. That, and the wine. My kid brother’s best friend was about to kiss me. Worst of all, I wanted him to.
After that, here’s what we talked about: doughnuts, Pulp Fiction, best birthday parties we ever had, hidden talents, UFOs, time travel, whether politics attracts assholes from the start or turns normal people into assholes later, countries we wanted to visit, how whales breathe when they’re sleeping in the ocean, childhood fears, how to make enchiladas, cats versus dogs, and global warming.
“The thing about kissing is that it’s a balance between holding on and letting go.”
“Wanting without hope is torture. Wanting with hope is anticipation.”
He looked at me like he was memorizing every tiny detail—the way, I imagined, a painter must look at a subject.
Was I overwhelming? Or too emotional? Or too needy? I’d never thought of myself that way before, but I guess who you are always seems normal to you because you don’t know what it feels like to be anyone else.
In all my recent experience, being caught meant being left. Yet, here it was, the morning after, and the facts seemed pretty plain. Jake had chased me, caught me, then looked around, wrinkled his nose, and said, “Actually, you know what? Never mind.” Either I was, in actual fact, too much, or something about me attracted men who only wanted too little.
“What I really want is for you to not be here. And to never have been here.” He shrugged. “Right. So I’ll take the next best thing. Strangers.” “But we’re not strangers.” So true.
“I’ll pretend for you, Helen,” he said at last. “But there’s no way I’m going to believe it.”
They were blinking at me as if they literally had no idea what it might mean for someone’s life to fall apart. But that couldn’t be right. Everyone, no matter how carefully they do their eyeliner, knows something about disappointment, or loss. That said, the older you get, the more you know about those things. Maybe it wasn’t that they didn’t know anything—maybe it was just that they didn’t know enough.
“You can’t understand this yet, but that’s most of life: breaking your own promises to yourself.”
What the hell had I been thinking? I wasn’t a hiker! I wasn’t outdoorsy! My favorite things in the world were soft beds, good books, and big cups of coffee. I did not want to have my ass kicked—by Mother Nature or anyone else.
Because the only ways I knew how to shake off embarrassment were: (a) to leave the room, or (b) to laugh it off with a friend. Since I couldn’t leave, and I had no friends, the stakes were pretty high.
Maybe I should have joined them. That’s no doubt what Jake would have done—just bounded over like a chocolate Lab with a wagging tail to slip into the pack. But I wasn’t a chocolate Lab. In fact, in that moment, I was Pickle: a mangy-looking mini dachshund with a tail that never wagged and a foul temper. Maybe that’s why we got along so well.
“Chuck Norris doesn’t call the wrong number. You answer the wrong phone.” “When Chuck Norris does division, there are no remainders.” “Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.”
Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.
I wondered if stating a preference to the universe just dared it to mess with me. It might have been a smarter idea, at this point, to try some reverse psychology.
“It’s too late. Because I already love her.” Windy was still smiling as she shook her head. “Isn’t love awful?”
“People are always their own favorite topics,” she said. “It’s the only thing they’re experts on.”
happy people are more likely to register joy than unhappy people. So if you take two people who have experienced a day of, say, fifty percent good things and fifty percent bad things, an unhappy person would remember more of the bad.”
“The more you register good things,” she went on, “the more you will think about and remember good things. And since all you really have left of the past is what you remember—” “It changes the story of your life.”
A good nickname should say something about who you are. It hints at something profound. Or maybe it’s just funny. But it’s meaningful, no matter what. It shows that you are known, that you have an identity other people recognize.
“The things you think about determine the things you think about”—meaning the more you focus on something, the more likely your brain is to focus on it.
Sometimes it’s just nice to have something to hold on to.”
Girls always wanted to believe in love. Girls always wanted to feel seen, and admired, and wanted. Even girls who knew better. Like me.
The most important thing to remember is that getting what you want doesn’t make you happy.” “It doesn’t?” I asked. “Not for long. Happiness is more about appreciation than acquisition.”
So I got my wish for a nickname—but, as so often happens with wishes, it wasn’t at all what I’d hoped for.
“I gave you Jake because you’re headstrong and accident prone, and he’s our medic and I trust him to patch you up. I gave you Jake because you’re the best map reader we’ve got, and he’s damn near blind. And I gave you Jake because you absolutely never believe in yourself—and he finds a way to believe in you every damn day.”
“I don’t think trying to be happy means you can never be sad,”
“It’s sadness that gives happiness its meaning.”
“I’m sorry human beings are such a blight. I’m sorry we litter your earth and choke the fish in your oceans with plastic grocery sacks. We have been given incomprehensible beauty on this earth, but we don’t see it. We walk around angry and blind and ungrateful. I wish we were better, our dumb human race, but I don’t have much hope that we ever will be. The best I can do today is say: Thank you for this world of miracles. We will try to be more grateful. And less ridiculous.”
I would certainly never come back—but not because I’d never want to. Only because that’s how life is. It moves too fast—faster and faster the older you get, no matter how much you’d like to slow it down.
had finally come to understand that not getting what you want is actually the trick to it all. Because not getting what you want forces you to appreciate what you already have. I finally got that if you were always in a state of longing you could never truly get satisfied,
I willed myself to bounce back. Life is going to knock you down over and over, I reminded myself, and the best you can do is learn to get back up.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying, it’s only because in my dream I’m a lost child, hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
“I fell in love with his hair, and his beard, and the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, and his goofy Hawaiian shirts, and his can-do attitude, and the way he applies Band-Aids. I fell in love with the way he’s read every book in the world. How he listens when you talk and remembers what you say. How he knows every fact in existence about the ocean and the creatures that live in it. I fell in love with his forearms, and his calf muscles, and the way his front two teeth are just a little longer than the others. And the dimples. And the way he sings. And the way he watches me, and pays
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“He messed with my head.” “And your heart, it sounds like.” “That, too.” “Good thing the heart is so resilient.” “Mine’s not.”
“He doesn’t like you because you’re mean,” she said. “He likes you in spite of it.”
“It’s his heart he sees with, sweetheart.”
“It was like you only wanted the ones who didn’t want you. Like you needed the challenge of getting their attention.”
“You can’t tell people their lives.” I shut my eyes. “Because they have to figure it out themselves.”
Maybe you lost Jake. Maybe he’ll never come back. Maybe he’ll marry this girl and have a hundred babies—” “That’s enough of that.” “But it’s okay. He taught you something. He taught you how to let somebody love you a little bit. That lesson right there is enough to change your life.”
children can’t see their parents clearly until they grow up.”
