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It was as if being a woman was a disease that you didn’t wish to catch.
Yes, she loved him, but she also liked him. She liked herself when she was with him.
“Always remember, mine Sadie: life is very long, unless it is not.” Sadie knew this to be a tautology, but it also happened to be true.
She told herself that no matter what Dov said, she wouldn’t argue, cry, or complain.
“Let her know you’re there. And if you can manage it, bring her a cookie, a book, a movie to watch. Friendship,” Marx said, “is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.”
Because you are my oldest friend. Because once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me. Because I might have died without you or ended up in a children’s psychiatric hospital. Because I owe you. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we make fantastic games together, if you can manage to get out of bed.
“Promise me, that no matter what happens, no matter what dumb thing we supposedly perpetrate on each other, we won’t ever go six years without talking to each other. Promise me you’ll always forgive me, and I promise I’ll always forgive you.” These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them.
But this was classic Sam—he had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future.
They both giggled at their adolescent joke, and they felt twelve again.
It was past visiting hours, so only immediate family were allowed to accompany patients into their rooms. But when the nurse asked Sam who Sadie was, Sam answered quickly, “My wife.”
Why was it so hard for him to say he loved her even when she said it to him?
He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it.
There are, he determines, infinite ways his mother doesn’t die that night and only one way she does.
She was smart, funny, tough, pushy, a little mean. But smart was the main thing Sam liked about Lola. She wasn’t special smart, like Sadie, but she was smart.
How do I go on when the person I love most in the world is in love with someone else?
The easiest way to conquer a driving phobia, the therapist said, was to drive. Sam began to drive around Los Angeles at night, after work, and when he drove, he thought of his mother.
“I love Sadie Green,” Sam said helplessly. He felt childish saying this, but there it was.
He was twenty-seven and he had a mustache, but whenever she allowed herself to think of him as the kid from the hospital, her heart could not help but soften for him.
Sam looked at Marx, and for a second, he despised him: You, who could have anyone, why did you have to pick Sadie Green?
Video games don’t make people violent, but maybe they falsely give you the idea that you can be a hero.
The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else.
“And what is love, in the end?” Alabaster said. “Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”
