Marsha > Recent Status Updates

But Napoleon did feel some sympathy for Verne, and respect. Toughness often had no chance to be expressed, and thus people were misjudged as soft only because they'd never had to be tough. And they could then be tough as nails in one direction and without a clue in another.
Verne nodded. "Very well. I agree." He offered Napoleon his hand, then realized his mistake, and reddening, withdrew it.

Mack shook his head. "I say no. I say we pursue it ourselves."
"Why?"
"We don't know what it is yet. We don't know where it comes from."
"No, because we do know what it is yet, and we must not hide anything from the Council."
"At least keep it to the Order, not the Council."
She pondered that, sidestepped for the moment. Mack could keep what he wanted to himself. She was free not to follow his advice.

Her eyes flick back to me, widening--warming--with the double meaning behind my words. I love you. The phrase hovers on my lips then, three words, three simple trips of the tongue. But ever since that night when we first admitted how we felt, I still haven't spoken them to her. However brave Wren believes me to be, I'm not yet brave enough for that. So instead I press my mouth against hers.

“Seventeen,” she repeats, something a little wistful in her voice, even though it couldn’t have been much more than a few years ago for her. “The prime of your feminine youth. Still fresh enough that attraction and desire feel new to you, but old enough to understand what to do with them. You must have watched someone by now and wished you could know them. Wondered whether their thoughts might stray to you.”

They sneak through the grass in hushed voices past one of Henry's PPOs dozing on the porch, racing down the pier, shoving at each other's shoulders. Henry's laugh is high and clear, his sunburned shoulders bright pink in the dark, and Alex looks at him and something so buoyant fills up his chest that he feels like he could swim the length of the lake without stopping for air. He throws his T-shirt down.

Kiki led Kastov into the cozy kitchen. It was nothing like the kitchen collaged in her journal, ripped from the pages of the Giroud promotional booklet. That was Kitchen of the Future: stainless steel everything, a double-wide oven, and fridges that looked big enough to hide multiple bodies.
But this was good too. A large cooktop, a small walk-in freezer, and an oven that usually worked.

Jordan's head fell back as he groaned, stomping off to the kitchen to throw away the trash in his hands. "Kill me now, God."
Rex would've normally found himself rolling his eyes at just how dramatic Jordan could be, but his gaze was glued to the man's ass as he walked away. He didn't consider himself...religious, but a gift like the one Jordan walked around with was the only evidence he needed for divine creation.

"This wouldn't simply be you moving to make me happy?"
"No, I want to make me happy. And yeah, part of that is us together, a life together, but I also want to see if I can find a job I truly love."
"I want that for you too." Luis squeezed his hand again, less reassurance for Tucker and more anchor for himself, for all these rising emotions in him.

His body was still humming with the aftereffects from the shower as they walked toward the building. They'd kissed and kissed, stroking each other off like they had decades, not minutes, and when he'd finally climaxed, his knees had barely held him with the force of the pleasure. "Back to the grind now." No more flirting, no more tender glances, and definitely no touching.

"I know, I know. You're leaving." He didn't need the reminder. time was slipping away, even now. That feeling at dinner, like they were something solid and real, was fleeting at best. But he also wasn't going to lie about how it made him feel. "And I'm not going to stop you. All I mean is that I like the connection part while I have it. It enhances everything else, and I'm not going to apologize for enjoying that."

There was nothing weird about getting a ride home. In a two car/three driver household, it happened, way more than Tucker would like. Garrick probably would have been happy to provide a lift had it come to that. Luis playing taxi shouldn't have felt any different, and yet, the whole time they were at the air base, his neck tightened every time he thought about it. Which was often...

"Tomorrow I'm supposed to take you out to the field."
"Sounds good." And it did--not the spending hours together, but getting out of the office was always his favorite part of the job, and he always felt like he did his best work hands-on rather than merely crunching data in front of a screen. Which was what loomed after Tucker retreated to his own office, slow-moving hours of reviewing records.

Tucker's eyes went wide as Garrick got specific on gender, but if he was truly shocked, he didn't offer any commentary on that either. Like most of Garrick's friends, he undoubtedly had some idea that Garrick was pan, even if they'd never had a format conversation about it. He wasn't one of the party or bar scene friends, but he'd probably heard something over the years. "Sounds good."

"Bedtime for us." Garrick felt somewhat strange talking to the dog, but after several hours of temporary dog ownership, it was less weird than it had been. Rain had gone away to eat dinner with Shirley, then returned to take cookie for a short walk in deference to her hurt foot. She'd taken to the sparkling collar Rain had picked out like a champ, not even protesting any and had happily gone trotting off with Rain.

When we leave the chief's office, Bella rubs my back and I shake her off. "Please don't," I say. I'm still furious with myself for losing my composure like that, and so upset I blew my chance to figure out what's happened to Ursula. "I just have to file the reports for today and I can come help you look for her. We'll find her...together." Bella goes over to her desk and sits down.

"Wait till we get our hands on you!" another troll warns.
"Awful cliches, is that the best they can do?" says Alistair.
"They don't have a lot of imagination," says Filomena, grinning even as she looks back, sweating under her layers.
She, Jack, and Alistair are outnumbered. There are too many of the Rotten Rigatonis. They're an arm's length away. In a second, a pasta pile-on will commence.

Nick enters and finds me right away, pulling me to the balcony windows. It feels like I haven't seen him in ages.
"I'm so sorry I had to leave without notice. My dad just wanted me close, and the other chapters are asking questions about the Table, and...it's bad. Really bad. Can you forgive me?" he leans back and frowns. "You look scared, B." His eyes widen. "Did Sel get to you again?"

He smiles, small and secret, and brings his free hand up to cradle my jaw, sweeping his thumb over it. His eyes follow the movement thoughtfully before they rise to claim my gaze again. He squeezes my wrist, then lets me go.
I lurch backward on my knees, my cheeks heated, the ghosts of his hands on my skin.
I'm grateful that he's busy adjusting his pillows and not looking at me.

He laughed, but then got serious again right away. "Astrid, look at your back. You could have died. Should have died. That you didn't is a miracle. Do you want to mess with that? Considering there are man-eating monsters out there?" I looked out the window again. Somewhere in the dark, the karkadann waited. I couldn't hear him anymore, but I could still tell. It was such a part of me now, this unicorn sense.

I guess it actually wasn't possible to completely forget that she had decided to die. Because the whole time as we were talking, it was in the back of my mind and it was stressing me out a little bit, the idea that Rachel was close to the end of her life. Or not stressing me out, but just kind of weighing on me and making me feel a little short of breath.

"That's what true science is. It's extremely dangerous. But at least this space alien felt bad about it. He sent one of his alien brothers to visit me and the alien brother drew me this mystical hieroglyph on my cast. Check it out. It says, 'My heart aches with the regretful sorrow of a thousand moons,' in this really touching and beautiful alien language. Unfortunately, to us it looks like boobs."

Chad hooked a thumb toward the den. "Have time for a talk?"
"Sure. Want something to eat or drink?"
"No, Tori and I just ate at Popeye's."
Jake quickly slid into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before he re-entered the room. He removed the cat from the recliner and sat down while Chad sat on the ottoman at his feet.

"Gil, I think we've been over this. Our dreams took different paths." She paused. "They no longer twine together in that hazy state of bliss."
"Dr. Morgan's office called."
"Listen! I'm NOT getting breast implants.
And I'm NOT getting Botox injections. And I'm NOT altering my body in any way for any body. Got it?" She slammed the phone down.

I keep scrolling without really looking. Steph is convinced that she's proving something by pursuing an HBCU--proving that she's down for the cause, that she's rooting for everybody Black. Does she think that in order to be "down for the cause," I have to go to an HBCU? To want us to succeed, I have to go to an HBCU? Is that right? What if I hadn't applied to Spelman at all?

Mrs. Hubbard began telling the girl horrible stories about the Faceless, but Jin's attention was pulled away by a loud sniff at his side. He turned and just about jumped out of his shoes when he found the large cat standing almost right on top of him, its ears back and a wild look in its eyes. He quickly moved out of its way, but the cat followed right along. How could it sense him?

It's not good to coddle kids with ASD. They need to learn how to interact with neurotypical kids. That's what they want,a nd that's what their parents want. But neurotypical kids have a right to feel safe and sometimes children with ASD can be aggressive or even frightening. In addition, teens with autism can be sexually inappropriate.

The complaining started as soon as my sons opened the door. "Mom, there's this kid in our group who's so annoying! He's so bad at everything! He thinks he's one of the smartest people in the world. Right before you got here, we were on the basketball court and he missed a basket, so I gave him the ball and he freaked out that I touched the ball. I'm not going near that kid again."

Good teasing is one of the cornerstones of great friendships. Friends who care about each other, know each other well, and are comfortable together can tease and joke around with each other--"with" (not "at") being the operative word. With good teasing, there's no intention to put the other person down, and everyone knows what's off-limits to tease about.

I know that if you want to see those pictures, you're going to figure out how to do it. Here's why I don't want you to watch porn. It brings you into a really complicated world where you're being exposed to really messed-up images and messages about how men and women interact sexually. It's also all fake. Porn is to sex like the WWE is to fighting. It's a performance where women are supposed to look a certain way.

We're now in really tricky territory--especially if your child is socially intelligent, highly verbal, and persistent and has a good memory. Obviously, having these attributes is helpful for anyone's future success, but when you're dealing with a boy who has them, it's understandable if sometimes you wish he weren't so smart and determined.