65
" Stumbling closer, I held up the manuscript, the pages flapping frantically in the wind. “I take it this is a murder mystery? You killed the ex-fiancée and thanked her in the dedication? Mighty dignified of you, I must say.”
“Nah. It’s a horror novel. But yeah, the bimbo dies in the end. Bob Hall says it’s going to be a bestseller, so I figured I owed her some thanks for the inspiration.” He edged a few feet closer, his smile spread from ear to ear. The glimmer in his eyes flickered toward the ocean, breaking our connection. He hung his head, licked his lips, then returned his eyes to mine, restoring the connection with an intense smolder. “Are you gonna get over here, or what?”
Letting out a soft chuckle, the tears began to blind me. “Make me. "
― , Preservation (Preservation, #1)
66
" Relationships are physics. Time transforms things- it has to, because the change from me to we means clearing away the fortifications you'r put up around your old personality. Living with Susannah made me feel as if I started riding Einstein's famous theoretical bus. Here's my understanding of that difficult idea, nutshelled: if you're riding a magic Greyhound, equipped for light-speed travel, you'll actually live though less time than will any pedestrians whom the bus passes by. So, for a neighbor on the street with a stopwatch, the superfast bus will take two hours to travel from Point A to Point B. But where you're on that Greyhound, and looking at the wipe of the world out those rhomboidial coach windows, the same trip will take just under twenty-four minutes. Your neighbor, stopwatch under thumb, will have aged eighty-six percent more than you have. It's hard to fathom. But I think it's exactly what adult relationships do to us: on the outside, years pass, lives change. But inside, it's just a day that repeats. You and your partner age at the same clip; it seems not time has gone by. Only when you look up from your relationship- when you step off the bus, feel the ground under your shoes- do you sense the sly, soft absurdity of romance physics. "
― , Half a Life
67
" Finally when he climbed below deck after dark, wondering where his dinner was, perhaps with a storm come up and rough seas and blinding rains, I'd sulk and lure him into the warm and steamy darkness and from the hairs of his warm body I'd breed a myriad smiling, sparkle-eyed one-year-olds, my broods, my flocks. In the churning seas, below the waves, together inside our hammock woven in coarse sailcloth by Unguentine's deft hands, a spherical webbed sack which hung and swivelled between the two walls of our bedroom, we would spin round and round with lapping tongues and the soft suction of lips, whirling, our amorous centrifuge, all night long, zipped inside against the elements. Now, years and years later, those nights, the thought and touch of them is enough to make me throw myself down on the ground and roll in the dust like a hen nibbled by mites, generating clouds, stars and all the rest. "
― Stanley Crawford , Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine
75
" Do you think they’ll ever be a place for us? I mean, do you think there’s a place for someone who lives under the radar, someone who has to pretend, someone who is a spy?”
“Yes.” Daly said it with such confidence that I sat up in my bed, my cast dangling over the edge.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“There has to be. I don’t usually philosophize, but I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That even when we’re pretending, even when we’re hiding under wigs or accents or clothes that aren’t our style, we can’t hide our nature. Just like I knew from the moment I met you that you would choose this life. And just like I knew, when you told me about this mission, that you would agree to help the CIA find this girl. You would sacrifice yourself and your time with your brother to save someone. It’s just who you are.”
“I’ve already messed things up, Daly. What if I’m not good enough? What if I can’t do it?”
“That’s the thing, though. You’ll find a way.”
I lay back again and buried the side of my face into my pillow. “I’m just not sure how.”
“If you continue to think as you’ve always thought, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got,” Daly said. I considered that. I wasn’t ready to give up. At least not yet. “That one is Itosu wisdom, in case you wondered.”
I yawned into the phone. “It’s good advice.”
“I’ll let you go. You should be resting. Don’t you have school in the morning?” He said the last part in a teasing tone.
“Yeah, if I make it through another day at school. Maybe they’ll get rid of me—kick me out or something. You’d think I would have inherited some of my mom’s artistic genius.”
“Can I give you one last bit of advice, Alex?”
“Sure.”
“Throw it all out the window.”
“What?” I stared at my open window. A slight breeze blew the gauzelike drapes in and out as if they were a living creature.
“Everything you’ve learned about art, the lines, the colors, the pictures in your head from other artists—just throw it all out. And throw out everything you’ve learned from books and simulations about being a good spy. Don’t try to be like someone else. Don’t force yourself to follow a set of rules that weren’t meant for you. Those work for 99.99% of the people.”
“You’re telling me I’m the .01%?” I asked skeptically.
“No, I’m telling you you’re not even on the scale.” Daly’s soft breathing traveled through the phone line. “With a mind like yours, you can’t be put in a box. Or even expected to stand outside it. You were never meant to hold still, Alex. You have to stack all the boxes up and climb and keep climbing until you find you. I’m just saying that Alexandra Stewart will find her own way.”
The cool night air brushed the skin of my arm and I wished it was Daly’s hand instead. “You sure have a lot of wisdom tonight,” I told him. I expected him to laugh. Instead, the line went silent for a moment. “Because I’m not there. Because I wish I was.” His words were simple, but his message reached inside my heart and left a warmth—a warmth I needed.
“Thank you, James.”
“Take care, Alex.”
I wanted to say more, to keep him at my ear just a little longer. Yet the words itching to break free couldn’t be said from over two thousand miles away. They needed to happen in person. I wasn’t going home until I found Amoriel. Which meant I had to complete this mission. Not just for Amoriel anymore. I had to do it for me. (page 143) "
― Robin M. King , Memory of Monet (Remembrandt, #3)
77
" But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
You'll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say Ave there for me,
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me "
―