Home > Work > Waiting for the Flood (Spires, #2)
1 " I have a sort of . . . thing, I suppose, for certain words. They spark inside me, somehow, turning me to touchpaper, but I don't know what they are until someone says them. "
― Alexis Hall , Waiting for the Flood (Spires, #2)
2 " I knew how to be a friend, a lover, a partner. I knew how to make someone feel cherished and seen and listened to -- everything I had myself always so desperately wanted and been afraid I might never have because I was so used to being overlooked. "
3 " I thought of Marius. Wild, wonderful, Byronic-fantasy Marius, who had somehow found something he wanted in the everyday quietness of me. Until he hadn't. "
4 " I never interrupt people when they're speaking because I know only too well how annoying it is. But with my every brattish interjection, the dimples deepened at the corner of his lips. And I was half-drunk on his smiling and the power of saying things that made him smile. "
5 " Life is so full of rough edges - small tasks and expectations that scratch you bloody and remind you that you're naked and alone. "
6 " In daylight and up close, he was merciless, all smiles and freckles, the brightest, boldest flame a moth could wish for. "
7 " His attention. Sweet and intense at the same time. Like a barley sugar I could untwist from its plastic and hold in my mouth. A flood of secret pleasure. "
8 " This is the story of my life: standing on the edges of things and worrying, when I'm supposed to just walk through them. "
9 " It's d-d-dishonourable to peek at someone else's cards.""Cribbage is cutthroat. "
10 " I don't need you to take care of me.""No, you need a kick up the arse. "
11 " Thank you," I said bravely, dropping the syllables cleanly, like marbles, and secretly full of the most pathetic pride imaginable. I had spoken to strangers. "
12 " I thought crocodiles lived under my bed and if my feet hung over the side, they'd get bitten off. So I slept in a ball. I think I still do actually." Oh God. Shut up. Shut up. "Out of habit, I mean, not crocodiles. I d-don't think that anymore. Obviously."He was quiet a moment. And then, faintly accusingly, "You know that's adorable, don't you?"I tripped hard over adorable and couldn't think how to answer. So I said nothing at all, and merely enjoyed my few minutes in a dangerous puddle with a man who maybe thought I was adorable. "
13 " He grinned, teeth and dimples and freckles moving like dust in a ray of sunlight. "Ayup, petal."Oh "
14 " I'm not trying to upset you. I just think it's about time you moved on.""I have moved on.""Have you? Because it looks a lot like standing around to me. "
15 " You don't really fall in love with a house. You fall in love with the life you could have in it. "
16 " I knew it was nothing more than the vaguest sense of connection, the kite-string tug of an intriguing stranger. But I simply wasn't ready to feel these things again.To gather up the dust of my heart and scatter it again on the winds of hope. "
17 " Are we going somewhere?” “To the river.” “But why?” “To see what we can see.” “I really d-don’t think . . .” We were going to end up as newspaper headlines: Pensioner and Homosexual Found Dead in River—Coincidence, Tragedy, or Satanic Ritual Gone Wrong? "
18 " It's something I imagine occasionally: waking up to discover civilisation has ended, leaving nothing but empty streets and silence. I don't actually want that to happen, but I ponder what I'd do, and how I'd stay alive. How it would feel to be really alone, and for my loneliness to be written on the landscape rather than merely upon me. "
19 " I'm not saying you should marry wossisname. Just give yourself a chance with him.""A chance to what?""Be with someone again.""I w-w-want to," I whispered. "But what if it goes the same way? W-what if I'm unbeable with? "
20 " I put my head in my hands. "Oh, I don't know anymore. I don't know where love ends and habit begins.""Who does? "
