Home > Author > Shirlene Obuobi
1 " All this time, I'd assumed that being a doctor meant performing miracles. Fixing bodies. Saving lives. I had hardly considered the flip side of that coin: that it also meant looking a patient's family in the eye and telling them to say their last goodbyes. That it meant staring down the permanence of death over and over again, until it stopped feeling like something to be prevented at all costs and instead became something to be occasionally embraced. "
― Shirlene Obuobi , On Rotation
2 " Okay, sweetie,” she said. “But just know . . . the relationship types don’t stay single for long. Get in there before someone else does. "
3 " they did want the kind of woman that society told them they should—thinner than me, paler than me, less educated and more in awe of them than I ever could be—they left. "
4 " don’t think I’m not enough,” I said plainly. “I think I’m too much. "
5 " been getting those flowers for me. He’d been getting them for himself: to prove that he was the kind of guy who got girls flowers. And deep down, I’d known that. "
6 " What was wrong with me? It was like Tabs had said. I didn’t love Frederick, and he hardly liked me. I was too brash for him, too unpolished. He wanted a poised, "
7 " Makes me wonder what else that mouth do. "
8 " If Fate was what kept bringing us together, She and I needed to have some words. It seemed cruel for Her to force this man, who pressed every single one of my buttons and seemed determined to have me in his orbit, into my life. "
9 " Look. I was drawn to you. I don’t know why.” “Because you were attracted to me,” I supplied. It wasn’t just my imagination. Admit it, Ricardo. Admit why we’re here even now. “You’re a pretty girl,” Ricky confessed. Then he turned to face me, his jaw set. “But I didn’t mean anything by it, honest. "
10 " No one before him had managed that, no matter how poorly they fit the script for what a fuckboy "
11 " was supposed to be. I’d made it to almost twenty-five before convincing a man to commit to me, and even he hadn’t made it a year before saying “never mind. "
12 " It had been fifteen days since Nia and I had last spoken, a fact that was confirmed by the time mark of our last exchange before "
13 " I’d thought there would be an end to the depth of my feelings for Ricky, but somehow every time I saw him, I fell exponentially "
14 " harder. Tabatha had been wrong. I didn’t need to sleep with Ricky to get too far gone; I was already there. "
15 " Operation Deep Clean went into effect immediately after forty-eight hours of Ricky-related radio silence. I wasn’t going to allow myself to sink into a funk of self-inflicted misery by scrolling through his Instagram or rereading our texts. No. I was going to be "
16 " Hey,” he said, and I licked my lips, watching as he homed in on the motion. “I’m going to kiss you now. Is that okay? "
17 " I’d imagined what kissing Ricky—actually kissing him—would be like. I’d imagined it would be electric, that it would feel the way touching him felt but times a thousand. But I hadn’t expected it to feel like home. The first touch of our lips together was brief, like "
18 " an experiment, or a question that we both answered with an emphatic yes. Warmth trailed down my body, like I’d taken a long draft of wine, and settled in my fingertips and the parts of my body where we touched. We kissed for a long time, my arms twining around his neck, his hands sliding down my sides to clasp me at the waist. "
19 " And at first, I was pissed. She’d cheated on me, right? Met some other guy and was carrying on right under my nose . . . but then, I realized that I’d been doing the same thing. With you. "
20 " Listen, gordito. The secret to long-lasting love is simple. You wake up. You roll over and look at your wife. And you say to yourself, today, I will choose you. I will love you. And you keep doing that every single day "
