The damage was to our love: it had lost its warmth, its spontaneity, and become a willed, conscious, rueful love. She was pleased to see I still loved her; I was pleased to see how readily both she and I were fooled. The two of us were aware of being pleased, which intensified our truce. But we must have sensed that being so easily assured was nothing more than a dilution of our love. She hugged me more often, and I wanted to be hugged. But I didn't trust my love, and I could tell, from the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn't looking, that she didn't trust it either.
. . .
We love only once in our lives, my father said, sometimes too early, sometimes too late; the other times are always a touch deliberate.
. . .
I may end up being jealous because I have to be.
. . .
I prefer the illusion of perpetual fasting to the certainty of famine. I have, I think, what's called a broken heart.
. . .
There is grace, and skill, and follow-through in everything you do. No affectation, no exaggeration, just the thing itself. I envied you.
. . .
After years in the real world, I had shed some of my indecision, my fears, hurdles had come down, the risks not a worry – if I get burned, I get burned.
. . .
She was right. We'd always been in love, she and I. But what had we done with our love? Nothing. Perhaps because the model for such love didn't exist, and neither of us had either the faith, the courage, or the will to come up with one. We loved without conviction, without purpose, without tomorrow.
. . .
"There's a life that takes place in ordinary time," I said, "and another that bursts in but just as suddenly fizzles out. And then there's the life we may never reach but that could so easily be ours if only we knew how to find it."
. . .
Learn to see what's not always there to be seen and maybe then you'll become someone.
. . .
Relief. And with relief, its terrible partner, indifference, which is the impulse to let go before we've even begun reaching for what we crave.
. . .
Because I was scared of you. Because I wanted to make love to you but feared you wanted it slam-dunk. Because I wanted you forever, and I knew you'd laugh if I told you. You and I were both quick and easy with men, and quick and easy was the last thing I wanted with you. So I waited. Then I got used to waiting. Eventually, waiting was more real than what we had.
. . .
There were sure to be more e-mails with more dearests – I knew this – and my heart would skip a beat and catch itself hoping each time her name floated across my screen, which meant I was still going to be vulnerable, which meant I could still feel these things, which was a good thing – even losing and aching was a good thing.
