It didn’t feel like the Fates were looking over me that day. When I glanced up, I couldn’t see destiny’s threads tangling in the sky like the silk of a giant spider’s web, woven by three pairs of gnarled, arthritic hands. All I saw was blue – the timeless blue of an empty sky, and the restless blue of a rough ocean.
I laughed as I twisted to face him and raised my arm to hit in one move. He caught my wrist and my laugh caught in my throat. A mischievous grin curved my mouth as I raised my other hand to hit him. He reached over me and caught that wrist too, gently pinning my arms above my head as he straddled my hips. The space between us boiled my blood.
I could hear the chaotic laughter trailing behind me. It turned the ageless trees into a menace. They loomed around me, while hiding him. The branches tore at my skin in an effort to bind me, while weeds sought to shackle my ankles, so that I could go no further. The pain they caused was minor, when I compared it to the searing inferno at my core.
For a second, I stared at the map of her veins just under the surface of her thin skin. It was like her body was trying to become diaphanous. Instead of getting harder and stronger and full of life as we age, we disappear slowly. Our skin thins and evaporates. Our nails barely coat our fingertips. Our hair falls out. We are never more see-through.
Thane - She grasped my face in her hands and pulled me to her, pressing soft kisses on my lips. My arm slid around her waist, and my hand pressed against the small of her back until her body melded with mine. My tongue demanded entrance, and she opened to me, allowing me to taste her, tease her, devour her. And in that moment, I claimed her as mine.
If you continue to threaten us, I will act upon my threat.’ I felt silly using the precise language of bargaining dictators and gangsters, but they seemed to take it seriously. Stickings’ smirk almost completely faded. ‘The thing is, Effie –’ his voice dropped to barely a murmur, ‘– I don’t believe you.
In a world where PG 13 means kinda-sorta-depends on your level of morals, I don’t wish to loosen our kids’ morals just because some adults choose to say, “They are going to see it anyway.” If we don’t show them that integrity is something you should always have in the back of your mind, then we’ve given up on them.
GET IN" he says, getting in on the driver side. I get in with no questions. Okay. This is a bad movie waiting to happen-I'm getting in a car with a guy I just met today who is keeping secrets from me. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm too scared to speak or ask or run away, though. So I just get in and put on my seat belt. I am so stupid.
He had never seen the ocean before; he knew it only as the featureless blue void between the detailed continents on his father’s old globe. But now he saw that it was anything but featureless; distant blue swells rising and falling, like great lungs tasked to power the surging and receding of the foamy waves washing across the shoreline beyond them.
It's not fair. It's not fair that he lets his rage take over, that he lets it rule him. I don't know why he has to let it rule him. I don't know why he has to be two people. I don't know why he gets to be two people, and I only get to be me, the one who is here to take what he has to give, and who is here to pick pu the pieces afterward.
He speaks in that strange sports talk, telling me about the start of the new season and asks if I follow baseball.No. I really don’t.He assures me if I stay in town long enough I will become a baseball fan. It’s a requirement of living in St. Louis. Everyone is a Cardinal’s fan.“Loyal,” he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town.
I unlocked the deadbolt and flung the door open, stepping back for Gabby to see exactly who it was. “Hello, Sara,” I greeted.A bubble of laughter escaped Gabby before she could contain it. “Yes, hello ex-girlfriend Sara. And might I add: law-breaker? Who let you out of your cage? Don’t you know Joseph has a restraining order against you?
Sometimes I think that everyone has a tragedy waiting for them, that the people buying milk in their pajamas or picking their noses at stoplights could only be moments away from disaster. That everyone's life, no matter how unremarkable, has a moment when it will become extraordinary--a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen.
Do you know how hard it is to paint kindness?” She leaned her hip against a desk in the corner of the room, still watching me. “It’s the only part of a person I really want to capture. Everything else seems to get lost in layers of deception or defensiveness. But not kindness. You can’t hide it. And people either are or they aren’t.
He shakes his head and his mouth is quirked at one corner. I can't tell if he thinks I am sort of amusing or truly pathetic. It's especially hard to tell because we are both looking resolutely at the teacher so she can't accuse us of not paying attention. We talk out of the sides of our mouths, like gangsters in those old movies my dad likes to watch.
