“There will be a time when you are forced to follow your heart away from someone you love.”
“How accommodating love is; it forgives everything.”
“She d either be a heartless mother and wife or a spineless enabler, when all she really wanted was the man she d once believed him to be.”
“I d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you. And I did. But that right there was why it was doomed.”
“I wish i were a little girl again, because skinned knees are easier to fix than broken heart.”
“Never love that which you cannot keep.”
“When he asked if he was mine, tears in his eyes, I think he knew what he would do, what he would have to do, and he was mourning us. He was mourning us the whole time.”
“She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He d said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him - and truly she did - he wasn t hers. He belonged to his wife. She d earned him. It didn t matter that he was her first love or that she was his passion. It didn t matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn t matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn t matter that he didn t love the woman. It didn t even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliche. He was married to someone else and that meant that she was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman s marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it. ”
“But then Mason touches my neck, to the spot on it where the cut from that night has since healed, and I pull away. He was right, after all; it didn t leave a scar, though part of me wishes it had. At least I d have some evidence, some justification of this permanence. Stains are even worse when you re the only one who can see them.”
“I say, Well then I don t know if it was real, and that makes me feel like I m going insane again. Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy and then a desperate desire for the cave. He will get lonely there eventually and come back. To me? He doesn t pause. To someone new. And I ll have to watch another girl? You will have to, but you will also know what lies ahead for that poor girl.”
“It s the broken plans you have made that are the hardest to get over.”
“You selfish bitch! She had known for a long time that putting her needs above those of Adam s wife and children was indeed selfish. She had no real answer to the accusation thrown at her. I m sorry she said, with her head in her hands. you re sorry? came her adversary s disbelieving reply. I am. I m sorry he married you when he was in love with me. I m sorry I couldn t have loved someone else. I m sorry your marriage is a joke and I m sorry that I m alone. I m sorry for a lot of things - for you, for your kids, for me and for him. I spend most of my time being sorry. For a moment there was silence at the end of the line. all you had to do was stay away if only I could have. tears escaped and raced down her cheeks. I hate you!”
“I was a fool. I should have grabbed him when I could have had him all to myself, snatched him up like a ripe mango at the market. But how was I to know that this was what love felt like?”
“Girls spilled drinks down their dresses and flicked their hair. Wishing anyone, maybe even you, would notice them... You were someone to me.”
“She was drawn to damaged souls like a moth to a flame. ”
“What Karen wants to do - needs to do - is cry, but she can t. Here, alone, when she could howl, beat the sofa cushions, scream; now, somehow, she is unable. It s for fear that if she gives in to it, she ll lose all sense of who she is. She is afraid that if she falls apart in private, then she ll fall apart completely. That if she crumbles, like a house in an earthquake, she will disappear down some deep, dark crevasse, and never be able to pull herself out and put herself back together again.”
“The emptiness made her insides ache.”