The Ex Vows Quotes

“It’s a privilege to have someone trust you enough to show you those pieces of themselves, the most vulnerable and tender, the least polished. It’s a show of trust to let you see them first thing in the morning, in the middle of a panic attack, right after they’ve cried. To give you a shaky smile after a messy fight. To come back to you again and again with their heart in their hands.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“Sometimes I swear adulthood is staring at your phone and wondering which of your friends has enough time to deal with your latest emotional meltdown, then realizing none of them do.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“For past me, who didn’t give up, and for future me, who will look back on all of this and be so proud.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“It’s a gift to know someone when you’re in love with them, and a curse when you’re out of it.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“When I say I’m still in love with you,” he says quietly, “I mean today and yesterday and this entire week. I mean at Nick and Miriam’s wedding and I mean for the past five years.” If possible, he gets even quieter, but now he’s closer so I get every word. “When I say I’m still in love with you, I mean the first time I saw you and right now. I mean every second in between.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“You were shown that you weren’t allowed to need things that inconvenienced people, and you learned to make yourself smaller. But why can everyone else be messy and you can’t?”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“Time is a miracle. It shows you what you had, and sometimes it brings it back to you. Different. Better.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“Isn’t that the way I deserve to be loved— completely, messily, imperfectly? Isn’t that the way I deserve to love myself?”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“Fuck, the way I’ve wanted you,” he breathes against my mouth. “I don’t know how anyone can look at me and not see it.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“You and I are going to have a reckoning, Georgia. It doesn’t have to be this week, but it’s going to happen.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“And I think about how utterly heartbreaking it is that we’re using the same connection that allowed us to conduct a wordless conversation across the room to know each other in such a clinical way now. Like strangers who’ve seen each other naked in every way that counts, in all the ways that wreck you.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“You were always enough for me. I wasn’t enough for myself. I had to get there, and I’m so fucking sorry I hurt you along the way.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“But you deserve to let yourself feel whatever you need to. You can be messy. A disaster, if you need to. The people who love you will accept every single piece of it, I promise you.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“For a girl who struggled so mightily to know the shape and feeling of home, it’s a revelation to have so many places—and people—to call it.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“There you are.” A smile melts across his face, slow and sleepy. “Hey, Peach.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“But while he was trying to fix what was broken in his past, he was breaking something that was right in front of him.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“Each brick was a time he’d fucked up or I had, a time when either one of us could’ve said what was on our mind and said nothing instead. It was endless tiny transgressions that didn’t ruin us in the moment but added to the wall we built. On this night in December five years ago, I see how tall it is. How unclimbable.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“Years later Eli will tell me that he fell in love with me right then, and in this movie-like memory I always see it—how we can’t quite break eye contact, the flush along the shell of his ear when I sit next to him on the couch minutes later, the way his eyes linger on me when Adam and I bicker over control of the TV, the steady bounce of his knee. The beautiful, shy smile he gives me over the pizza we have for dinner later. He’ll hold on to it for years, but eventually that spark will become a wildfire. And then we’ll burn it all down.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“That’s why it matters. Because I’m so in love with you that I feel like I can’t breathe. I think it every time I look at you, every time you let me in or you laugh or you look at me like I mean something to you.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“I wondered a lot, alone in our bed while he pulled another all-nighter, when he stopped being hungry for me.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“They’ll continue to catch mine the way they are in this movie moment— like a latch hooking me, then locking us into place.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“But like all my most important words, they get stuck in my throat.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“I remember,” he says, eyes on me. The most dangerous phrase when it comes to us.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“Here’s the thing: I’m a list girl. I learned the magic of them long ago—the way they can streamline tasks and expectations. Needs and emotions. How they can take a messy, chaotic thing and make it manageable. They’ve been my coping strategy since I was a kid. They quiet my mind and untangle my emotions so that I stay cool, calm, and compartmentalized. So I’m not a messy, chaotic thing.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“So tell me what you want.” “I did.” “Say it again,” he demands. “You.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“I learned so young that other people’s needs were default, that mine had to be scheduled to be met, or, more easily, taken care of myself.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“It’s a gift to know someone when you’re in love with them, and a curse when you’re”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“I’m going to knock on your door later,” he whispers. “Please answer it.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“How strange it is to have a first for the second time. How lucky and messy and perfect.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows

“I follow him down the driveway with my feet dragging, that can we talk squeezing my throat, his yes, she is like fingers pinching my chin, demanding my attention for a landslide of memories.”
― Jessica Joyce, The Ex Vows