Katja Millay

“I’m going to walk over to you,” I say, taking one step at a time in her direction like I’m talking down a jumper. “I’m going to put my arms around you and I’m going to hold you,” I pause before taking the last step, “and you’re going to let me.”

“It’s a chair. Stop overanalyzing it. I’m not selling it and I’m not giving it to someone else. I made it for you. It’s yours.”

“I like finding things no one else is looking for. Things that got lost or forgotten, shoved in a corner. Stuff I never knew existed. I don’t even need to buy it. I just like to find it and know that it’s there. That’s the part I like.”

“I'm tired of being responsible for other people's misery. I can't even put up with my own.”

“I don't really care what people say about me. I'm fine with lies and rumors. It's the truth I don't want being told.”

“Immoral people debating the existence of God is always a crowd pleaser.”

“He took the fucking piano, Sunshine. He didn't take everything. Look at your left hand. It's probably clenched in a fist right now, isn't it?"I don't need to look. It is. He knows it."Now open it up and let it go."And I do.”

“Nothing is perfect. It's not even good yet. But maybe.”

“There's a reverence in the way he kisses me that frightens me, because it's the most wonderful thing I've ever felt.”

“It's not the sound itself that bothers me; it's just the fact that it's loud. The loud sounds make it impossible to hear the soft sounds and the soft sounds are the ones you have to be afraid of.”

“You didn’t get a choice in what happened to you. Neither didwe. But you have a choice in what happens now. We don’t. You’re the one in control and all we can do is sit on the sidelines and watch, even if youkeep making the wrong calls over and over again.” We’re obviously veering into sports metaphor territory. “We’re not going to force you to doanything you aren’t ready to do. You’ve had enough forced on you. But you have to make a decision about how long you’re going to let this defineyour life.”

“Call me Sunshine again, and I will murder you, cocksucker.”

“I haven't gotten better. I'm not even close to okay. The only thing I've done is to decide to get better. But I think that may just be enough. I'm trying to see the magic in everyday miracles now: the fact that my heart still beats, that I can lift my feet off of the earth to walk and that there is something in me worthy of love. I know that bad things still happen. And sometimes I still ask myself why I am alive; but now, when I ask, I have an answer.”

“I was ripped out of the water and thrown and smashed into a thousand pieces that I can't put back together. I don't know where they go. And there are so many missing that the ones that are left don't fit together anymore. I think I'll stay in pieces. I can shift them, rearrange, depending on the day, depending on what I need to be.”

“My jealousy is a living thing. Shifting, changing, growing. Like my rage and my mother's regret.”

“I’m trying to see the magic in everyday miracles now: the fact that my heart still beats, that I can lift my feet off of the earth to walk and that there is something in me worthy of love.”

“And if my Sea od Tranquility were real, it would be this place, here, with him.I don't say anything right away, because I just want one minute to look at him before I give him my last secret.And then I tell him."Your garage.”

“Maybe one day you'll come back. Maybe you never will and that'll suck, but you can't keep doing this. The blame and the self-loathing and the bullshit. I can't watch that. It makes me hate you for hating yourself. I don't want to lose you. But I'd rather lose you if it means you'll be happy. I think if you come back with me today, you'll never be okay. And I'll never be okay if you aren't. I need to know that there's a way for people like us to end up okay. I need to know that there even is such a thing as okay, maybe even good, and it's out there and we just haven't found it yet. There's got to be a happier ending than this, here. There's got to be a better story. Because we deserve one. You deserve one. Even if it doesn't end with you coming back to me.”

“Josh isn’t in love with me and I’m not in love with him.”“Sell it to someone who’s buying, Sunshine. Have you seen the way he looks at you?” I’ve seen the way he looks at me but I don’t know what it means. “Like you’re a seventeenth-century, hand-carved table in mint condition.”

“I don’t know anything about art so I can’t tell you that it’s watercolor or acrylic or that it’s on canvas or anything art related at all. I can tell you that it’s a painting of a hand, my hand, turned up and opened to the world and that it reaches into my body and rips out everything that’s left. Because in the palm, right in the center, is the pearl button I never reached.”

“I haven’t started counting yet. I wonder if it’s just me or if it’s like that for everybody; that every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they’ve been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren’t counting anymore, and you don’t even know when you stopped. That’s the moment they’re gone.”

“Seriously, Josh. What the hell?”

“Good Morning, Sunshine!" Josh F**king Bennett. By now, I'm pretty sure that if I were to find his birth certificate that is exactly what it would say.”

“What? Sunshine fits you. It's bright and warm and happy. Just. Like. You.”

“Not my fault you're distractingly pretty.”

“It doesn't matter if you do everything right, if you dress the right way and the right way and follow all the rules, because evil will find you anyway.”

“I don't do hugging. I don't like people touching me ever when there's no treat involved. It's too intimate and it bothers me.”

“I say Sunshine and then she shatters.All the pieces of all the girls go flying and I’m holding the one who’s left.”

“Congratulations, then. You wanted to be ruined? Well, you did yourself one better because you wrecked me, too, Sunshine. Now we’re both worth shit.”

“It’s an age old story … Boy meets girl. Boy asks girl to touch him inappropriately. Girl dazzles boy with her impressive knowledge and proper use of profanity.”

“Josh Bennett laughs, and for one minute, everything is right in the world.”

“Not my fault that you’re distractingly pretty.”I have to take a minute to confirm to the pissed off part of my brain that still works that, yes, in fact, I did just say that. And I don’t know if distractingly is even a word. If it is, it’s a stupid one. Like me.”

“With any other girl I could probably pull out the classic guy fail-safe of walking over and wrapping my arms around her and letting her put her head on my shoulder. It’s cheap, but it works. Drew swears by it. But I’m afraid that in this particular instance it would result in one of two things: a string of innovative new expletives or her knee in my balls. My money’s on the knee.”

“Do you know what I found?”Of course I do, and you know that I do. You just want to ask for dramatic effect and then you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“If self-adoration were cologne, he would be the boy you couldn't stand next to without choking.”

“I know at that moment what he's given me and it isn't a chair. It's an invitation, a welcome, the knowledge that I am accepted here. He hasn't given me a place to sit. He's given me a place to belong.”

“When you look at her what do you feel?... Joy, fear, frustration, longing, friendship, anger, need, despair, love, lust?""Yes.""Yes, what?""All of it.”

“Your name could mean to excel and you could be useless and crap at everything. You can put a name on anything, call it whatever you want, doesn’t make it real. Doesn’t make it true.”

“I've done goodbyes before, and I can do this one, too. Somehow this one hurts worse than the others; because this one I could prevent if I wanted to, since I'm the one saying it. This goodbye comes with a choice the way none of the others did.”

“Maybe I can save her right now, in this moment, and if I can do that, maybe it will save me and maybe that can be enough.”

“I'm not deluded enough to think it won't come out somehow, but it's nice to have one person exist who doesn't know all of my tragic bullshit. At least for a little while.”

“I don't know how to regret it. Because that would mean to regret that I ever met her and I can't make myself do that.”

“And that's the most confusing part - figuring out what's true.”

“I don't want to fix you. I want to fix this.”

“Everyone wants to fix me... You're supposed to be the person who doesn't want to fix me.”

“I may not be allowed to love her, but that doesn't mean I'll let anyone hurt her.”

“You are the only good reason.”

“Some things you just have to learn to live with.”

“I can be your other hand when you need it.”

“Depends on how badly you want it. It's worth whatever you're willing to pay for it.”