On Rotation Quotes

“All this time, I'd assumed that being a doctor meant performing miracles. Fixing bodies. Saving lives. I had hardly considered the flip side of that coin: that it also meant looking a patient's family in the eye and telling them to say their last goodbyes. That it meant staring down the permanence of death over and over again, until it stopped feeling like something to be prevented at all costs and instead became something to be occasionally embraced.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“Ricky had seen the full, unfiltered range of what I was, and he liked me. Just as I was. Angie Appiah, with no edits.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“But the truth is, Angie—you’re part of the problem. You only go for the low-hanging fruit, and you act all shocked when half of it is rotten.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“I realized that, all along, he hadn’t been getting those flowers for me. He’d been getting them for himself: to prove that he was the kind of guy who got girls flowers.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“But today, there was only me. And that was okay, because I was excellent company.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“I would do it again,” I said, setting our glasses down hard on the table. “You were disrespectful to me. I won’t tolerate that. Being family doesn’t get you a free pass to talk to me however you’d like.” I tore off a paper towel for both of us, then sat. “Let’s eat.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“renewing. If I had to let go of a love that was not quite that, that was okay. Because I loved myself, and these women had taught me how.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“Operation Deep Clean went into effect immediately after forty-eight hours of Ricky-related radio silence. I wasn’t going to allow myself to sink into a funk of self-inflicted misery by scrolling through his Instagram or rereading our texts. No. I was going to be”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“harder. Tabatha had been wrong. I didn’t need to sleep with Ricky to get too far gone; I was already there.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“I’d thought there would be an end to the depth of my feelings for Ricky, but somehow every time I saw him, I fell exponentially”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“It had been fifteen days since Nia and I had last spoken, a fact that was confirmed by the time mark of our last exchange before”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“I just want you to be careful,” Tabatha repeated. “I don’t like seeing my big sis get hurt.” “I won’t,” I promised, and left it at that.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“deeper, more fundamental than that. It was love, or at least something like it, and I was tired of trying to fool myself into thinking it was anything less.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“Tabatha tutted me. “Yeah, well, some of us can handle it.” She pointed at my chest. “You? No way. Your heart is attached to your vagina.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“almost laughed. I was uncertain about a lot of things, but Ricky’s commitment to serial monogamy was not one of them. “Nah,” I said, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” “Sure,” Tabatha said. “Just don’t come crying to me when you get chlamydia.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“stopping by for an impromptu dinner with his grandparents, a proposition I dodged by insisting that I would be working late.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“And Ricky wasn’t helping. In the forty-eight hours or so since we’d stepped boldly out of the friend zone, he’d been doing his best to plant seeds about the possibility of a long-term us into my head. He talked about attending music festivals that were a year away, posited taking a trip to Puerto Rico in February to escape the worst of winter. Yesterday, he’d even entertained the possibility of me”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“Just that I’m . . . relieved. I wasn’t sure that you felt the same way.” Ricky hummed in affirmation, and then he kissed me again, so slow and deep that I almost felt at peace. When he pulled away, his eyes were bright. “Me too.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“I really like you too,” I said softly. We giggled together, giddy as teenagers. But unlike my teen years, there was zero chance of my momma busting down the door to interrupt.* Nothing stopping me from letting the mouth that was”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“meaning permeate. Ricky had seen the full, unfiltered range of what I was, and he liked me. Just as I was. Angie Appiah, with no edits.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“I really like you,” Ricky said in response, and I warmed under those words, letting their”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“Listen, gordito. The secret to long-lasting love is simple. You wake up. You roll over and look at your wife. And you say to yourself, today, I will choose you. I will love you. And you keep doing that every single day”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“And at first, I was pissed. She’d cheated on me, right? Met some other guy and was carrying on right under my nose . . . but then, I realized that I’d been doing the same thing. With you.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“an experiment, or a question that we both answered with an emphatic yes. Warmth trailed down my body, like I’d taken a long draft of wine, and settled in my fingertips and the parts of my body where we touched. We kissed for a long time, my arms twining around his neck, his hands sliding down my sides to clasp me at the waist.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“I’d imagined what kissing Ricky—actually kissing him—would be like. I’d imagined it would be electric, that it would feel the way touching him felt but times a thousand. But I hadn’t expected it to feel like home. The first touch of our lips together was brief, like”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“Hey,” he said, and I licked my lips, watching as he homed in on the motion. “I’m going to kiss you now. Is that okay?”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“don’t think I’m not enough,” I said plainly. “I think I’m too much.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“they did want the kind of woman that society told them they should—thinner than me, paler than me, less educated and more in awe of them than I ever could be—they left.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“Okay, sweetie,” she said. “But just know . . . the relationship types don’t stay single for long. Get in there before someone else does.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation

“Look. I was drawn to you. I don’t know why.” “Because you were attracted to me,” I supplied. It wasn’t just my imagination. Admit it, Ricardo. Admit why we’re here even now. “You’re a pretty girl,” Ricky confessed. Then he turned to face me, his jaw set. “But I didn’t mean anything by it, honest.”
― Shirlene Obuobi, On Rotation