Rai (is hard to please) > Recent Status Updates

“You were a high-powered researcher, surrounded by students who hung on your every word. And you were answering a multiparagraph email with an uncapitalized no.”

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

“How are you?”
“Good. Fine. I mean, I wish I were dead. But aside from that.”

HHHHHHH mood

“And then you get a chunk of cheese, and I get a real job that pays real money and the joy of saying ‘I’m not that kind of doctor’ when someone is having a stroke on my airplane.”

These are the goals I can get behind

“Adam had been anything but a jerk to Olive, but did accepting his help while he acted horribly toward her fellow grads make her a bad person?”

Sure. If said grads weren’t also assholes. Which they are. So.

i HATE when people impose their relationship timeline onto other people’s relationships

“Consider my presence the equivalent of a father cleaning his rifle in front of his daughter’s boyfriend before prom.”
“Aww, Daddy.”

“I think that’s pretty standard protocol, before embarking on a fake-dating relationship.”
He tilted his head. “Standard protocol?”
“Yup.”
“How many times have you done this?”
“Zero. But I am familiar with the trope.”

“That for years she’d wondered whether she was asexual and she had realized only recently that she might be able to experience sexual attraction, but only with people she trusted deeply?”
Ha… haha. Ha.

“Then again, she’d also rather not be in this room with Adam Carlsen, have the semester begin in a handful of days, have climate change be a thing. And yet.”

“She would have loved to have someone in her life, but she doubted it was in store for her. Maybe she was unlovable. Maybe spending so many years alone had warped her in some fundamental way and that was why she seemed to be unable to develop a true romantic connection, or even the type of attraction she often heard others talk about.”

Oop- same???

“Have you considered getting a real girlfriend?”
His eyebrow lifted. “Have you considered getting a real date?”
“Touché.”

Promising banter 🤞🤞🤞

“She does look extra cute today, Olive reflected, pleased.”

Women supporting women is a fav

“Sometimes, it was okay to let a little ugliness into your story. That it would never rob you of all the beauty.”

“What if we don’t get a happy ending, Gus?”
(…)
“Maybe we should enjoy our happy-for-now.”

“I’ve never met someone who is so perfectly my favorite person.”

“The world looks different than I ever thought it could be, and I don’t want to look for what’s broken or what could go wrong. I don’t want to brace myself for the worst and miss out on being with you.”

“I know no matter how long I get to love you, it will be worth whatever comes after.”

“You’re not beholden to any promises, Gus.”
(…)
“It’s not the promise that matters.”

“I’m in love with a version of myself that can’t exist in this hell.”

“January, you are twenty-eight, and today I am your father.”

“I’m looking at you and I can’t believe you are going to become more amazing than you already are.”

“I’m your father, the man you made from nothing but your tiny fingers and toes.”

“Sometimes, January, being a parent feels like being a kid who someone has mistakenly handed another kid.”

“I’m a complete person, and not just someone else’s mistake.”

“I’d burned through all my anger, and fear was all that was left. Maybe that was what had been there all along, masked in thornier emotions.”

“Bad things don’t dig down through your life until the pit’s so deep that nothing good will ever be big enough to make you happy again.”

“When you love someone,” (…) “… you want to make this world look different for them. To give all the ugly stuff meaning, and amplify the good.”

“The way your writing always makes the world seem brighter, and the people in it a little braver.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever loved the world like you do. I remember being afraid of it. And then angry with it. And then just—deciding not to feel too strongly about it.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said, after a minute.
“No,” Gus answered, deadpan.

“Do you really think that was what this was about?”
“I mean, I hope it was at least partially an elaborate ruse to sleep with me.”

“I searched my stomach for that tight feeling, the sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I could find it, if I tried hard enough, but for once, I didn’t want to. This moment felt worth whatever pain it might bring later, and I tried to repeat that to myself until I was sure I’d be able to remember it if I needed to.”

“Instead of trying to convince myself that someday everything would be okay, I focused on the fact that, right now, it already was.”

“Gus still thought he was missing something, some special piece other people had, the thing that made people stay, and it broke my heart a little.”

“Tell me what you want, Gus. Not why you can’t have it, or what you think I want, or why you can’t give that to me.”

“Maybe he thought someone had to bear witness to the dark, or maybe he hoped that if he stared into the pitch-black long enough, his eyes would adjust and he’d see answers hiding in it.”

“If I ever got to kiss Gus again, I wanted it to be this version of him. The one who didn’t feel so weighted down by the world around him that he had to lean just to stay upright.”

“We were playing a game: how far can we go without admitting we’ve gone.”

“Happy. Not giddy or overjoyed, but that low, steady level of happiness that, in the best periods of life, rides underneath everything else, a buffer between you and the world you are walking over.”

“Sometimes not even wanting anything specific but just wanting, feeling like the world wasn’t big enough or bright enough.”