109
" I know what this is," he whispers, his voice faint above the music. I've known it from that first night I saw you at the show, but now there's no doubt in my mind."
My gaze is entwined with his. Our eyes are locked and the key is gone. My heart feels full in my chest, heavy but in a good way.
"It's love," he says, letting the words slip freely from his mouth. And when they do, they fill the air and multiply like musical notes in a cartoon.
"Love," I say as the record crackles and skips.
"Love," he whispers back, weaving his fingers in mine.
And when I set my head on his pillow, and our bodies become one, for the first time in my life I feel as if everything in this crazy, complicated world makes complete and utter sense. "
― Sarah Jio , Always
119
" Sometimes I think of my life as a great big story. Each silly thing I do is a new paragraph. And each morning I turn to the next chapter. It’s fun to think of life that way, each day being an adventure of the grandest proportions. If I can give you any advice, my dear, and I am unworthy, at best, to be doling out such wisdom, I might just say this: Whenever you’re down on your luck, and when things aren’t going the way you like, remember that you are the author of your own story. You can write it any way you like, with anyone you choose. And it can be a beautiful story or a sad and tragic one. You get to pick. "
― Sarah Jio , Goodnight June
120
" But it wasn't their separation that was consuming my mind just then; it was Evelyn's garden. Bee had taken us there when we were children, and it was all rushing back: a magical world of hydrangeas, roses, and dahlias, and lemon shortbread cookies on Evelyn's patio. It seemed like only yesterday that my sister and I sat on the little bench under the trellis while Bee hovered over her easel, capturing on her canvas whatever flower was in bloom in the lush beds. "Your garden," I said, "I remember your garden."
"Yes," Evelyn said, smiling.
I nodded, a little astonished that this memory, buried so deep in my mind, had risen to the surface just then like a lost file from my subconscious. It was as if the island had unlocked it somehow. "
― Sarah Jio , The Violets of March