She didn’t know if she cried for what she’d lost as a teenager, or for the confused tangle of emotions inside her now. Either way, Mike telling her that he was sorry against the top of her head was the only answer that made any sense.
Lauren GilleyHe knew he loved her in February: steam leaving the mug of coffee in her hands in thick curls; her hair a snarled mess around her shoulders; the morning on the other side of the window bitter and windswept; her face lovely, pale, and lonely in a way he didn’t understand. She sat in the chair in his bedroom, in his shirt and a pair of socks that went up to her knees, gooseflesh on her slender legs. A copy of Oliver Twist had been open across the arm of the chair. “I think it might snow today,” she’d said, and he’d been completely in love with her.
He thought she might have loved him back in March: in from the rain; his clothes stuck to his skin; the umbrella showering the hardwood of her entry hall; the dinner she’d planned forgotten when he’d helped her out of her jacket and she’d been shivering with cold. That day, when she’d pushed his wet shirt back off his shoulders and stretched up on her toes to kiss him, he was sure there was something new shining deep down in her coffee-colored eyes. “You’re so cute,” she’d said, and he’d known: she loved him.
The silence that hung between them was thick: it felt like it had its own pulse, its own insidious intentions.
Lauren GilleyI love you, he thought. And then left her.
Lauren GilleyIt wasn’t supposed to be this way. Jo was the blind kid running off emotions; Jess was the thoughtful, careful pragmatist who’d married for so much more than the high of stolen tongue ring kisses and the smell of a leather jacket. Jo was the dreamer who thought love compensated for everything; Jess was the realist who searched for love that didn’t need compensating in the first place.
Lauren GilleyFor a wondrous golden second, they basked in the afterglow, not caring that it was four in the afternoon and they were naked in front of the windows. “I missed you,” Ellie whispered right against his ear. “Don’t ever think that I wasn’t missing you like crazy all that time.
Lauren GilleyI know.” Her smile twitched, wry. “It’s taken me a while to figure out that love turns some men into shitheads every so often.” Her green eyes were too knowing. “Ben cares. Ben is freaking the hell out that a dead body turned up at you and Clara’s doorstep. That spells – ”
“Don’t say ‘love.’”
Jess almost smiled. “It’s Ben’s shriveled, mutant, parasitic brand of love. But it’s still love.
The night was a runny, watercolor black, rain sighing high in the tree tops, rustling on the pavement.
Lauren GilleyNights like this,” someone had told him, not so long ago, “feel like the world’s waiting for something.” He was sure, in hindsight, that on that night on a back step with a shared bottle of grocery store Pinot Noir, the girl beside him had wanted the two of them to be that something special.
Lauren GilleyHe felt her heartbeat against his shoulder, through his jacket, light as raindrops.
Lauren GilleyTags: parenthood
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