Rai (is hard to please) > Recent Status Updates

“When we finally stood to go to bed that night, Gus didn’t say good night. He said, ‘Tomorrow.’”

“Here’s someone I could never break.”

“He was a realist who was a little too afraid of hope to see things clearly when it came to his own life.”

“From the time he was a kid, no one had chosen him, and he was embarrassed by that, like it meant something about him. I wanted to tell him it didn’t. That it wasn’t because he was broken, but because everyone else was. ”

“Anger with all the broken parents, heartache that they too must’ve felt like kids—helpless, unsure how to make the right decisions, terrified of making the wrong ones”

“Now I wondered if he was simply tired, if life had beaten him into a permanent slouch, folded him over himself so no one could get at that soft center, the kid who dreamed of running away on trains and living in the branches of a redwood.”

“He wasn’t writing to save lives so much as to understand what had destroyed them.”

“Maybe she would realize the world she’d lusted after, the one she’d watched from behind circus tents and atop tightropes, that filtered past while she was hard at work, was as much an illusion as the one she knew.”

“It’s shit like this that makes it impossible for me to believe in happy endings. You never get the paper umbrellas you were promised in this world.”
“Gus,” I said. “You must be the paper umbrellas you wish to see in this world.”

“Pretending we weren’t acting sixteen years old and a little bit obsessed with each other.”

“LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES. YOU REALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE EATING AND THE CHOCOLATE MAP IN THE LID IS FUCKING ALWAYS WRONG.”

“It didn’t feel like a lie. Maybe a complicated truth, but not a lie.”

“These characters carried the truth of the people I’d loved.”

“Come on, Gus.” I bumped his arm. “You can do it. Be adorable.”
His eyes darted to where I’d bumped him, then back to my face, and he scowled.
“I think you misunderstood me. I said adorable.”

“I’m a very tall five four, actually.”
Stealing this.

“He fit so perfectly into the love story I’d imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life.”

“I hated thinking about it. Not because I missed him but because I felt bad for wasting so much of his time—and mine—trying to be his dream girl.”

“Again and again he told me I wasn’t myself. But he was wrong. I was the same me I’d always been. I’d just stopped trying to glow in the dark for him, or anyone else.”

“That whole night had taken on a hazy, soft-focus quality like we were only dreaming it. Looking back, I thought we sort of had been: him pretending to be endlessly interesting; me pretending to be spontaneous and carefree, as usual. Outwardly we were so different, but when it came down to it, we both wanted the same thing. A life cast in a magical glow, every moment bigger and brighter and tastier than the last.”

“I hid the complicated feelings that came with trying to memorize someone you loved, just in case.”

“Shadi told him I was actually an empress who’d been raised by two very sexy spies.”

As all bff’s should

“Shadi was a terrible driver. She screamed whenever she turned left.”

lmao me

“And yet, on the verge of what felt like true adulthood, they’d both been scared. But they’d been scared together.”

“I didn’t know what right felt like until you.”

“Losing the love of his life—his future—because he’d let the past win.”

“Maybe, like the ocean, he could evolve.”

“You can’t live life worrying about what people will think. You’ll wake up one day, look at a calendar, and count the days you could have spent being happy. With her. And no one else, especially the ones wagging their tongues, are going to be there to console you.”

“You can’t take the bad lessons you learned and apply them to every good thing that comes your way.”

“What if she just stayed and stayed and stayed, so he could wake up every morning and feel fucking substantial and alive, the way he’d done today?”

What if, indeed.

“He should have known that the second she was awake, looking at him, everything would be all right.
I’ll just talk to her.
Problem solved.”

YES. Yes, that’s exactly what you should do. Amen.

“Apparently, opening up meant getting more in return. Considering he’d never get enough of Hannah, being honest was definitely the way to go.”

“I don’t know what trying looks like for us. I just know that I want to.”
“Oh, Fox,” she whispered, bringing them chest to chest and pressing close, laying a cool palm against his cheek. “We’ve been trying this whole time.”

“You’re a surprise, Hannah. How could I hate them?” He cleared his throat hard. “Even familiar . . . you’re a constant surprise.”

“She could show up after their argument, after the hurtful words and revelations, and prove their relationship was resilient. That he could be part of something stronger than the pull of the past. That she could look him in the eye and respect him and care. She could show up, period.”

“Owning who I am is easier than getting hit with the proof that I’ve been used.”

Sometimes you can use yourself

“In this case, the loose ends were inside him. She wasn’t going to stop digging until she found and identified them one by one.”