71
" He’s not letting her get away with that.
Well fine, maybe she’ll just leave then, she has her own apartment, she hardly needs to sleep here, and besides, maybe he’s being nosy.
Maybe he is but she started it, and she can leave any time if she wants to, so long as she comes back.
Fine, but only because he said that last bit. She’s tired of people telling her she’s free to leave, she hates it.
He doesn’t want her to leave at all but there’s a whole thing in the rulebook about letting people have agency. ‘If it’s meant to be’ and all that.
She thinks that’s bullshit, can’t people just hold on?
He agrees. "
― Olivie Blake , Alone With You in the Ether
75
" Regan’s consistent unreachability was once a carefully honed practice that had gradually become a habit. When Regan was younger, she had coveted the prospect of a call or a text; it meant, primarily, attention. It meant that she had filled the vacancy of someone else’s thoughts. Then, after a while, she began to understand that there was power in devaluing her worth to others. She started to place limits on herself; she wouldn’t check her phone for ten minutes. Then for twenty. Eventually she’d space hours between, making a point to direct her thoughts elsewhere. If others were forced to wait for her time, she thought, then she would not have to owe so much of herself to them. Now, Regan is so very talented at being completely unreliable that people have "
― Olivie Blake , Alone With You in the Ether