Megan Hart

“It is such a secret place, the land of tears. That is what the narrator ofThe Little Prince says after the little prince argues with him the first time about matters of consequence. And he was right. My land of tears had been a secret for a very long time.”

“What are you, Elle? Are you a ghost? Are you an angel or a demon? Because you can’t be real.”

“No, Dan.”“And you want me to go.”I looked into his eyes. “No. I don’t.”He moved closer, encouraged, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Then what do you want, Elle?”“I want you not to have to settle,” I told him.“Is that what you think I’m doing?”“I know that’s what you’ll be doing. Because if you want more from me, you’re not going to get it.”He said nothing for a long time. “When I readThe Little Prince, I thought you must be the rose. You with your four thorns, convincing me you’re able to defend yourself. But now I know you hate roses. So you must be the fox instead.So maybe what you really want is for me to tame you.”From a lot of men, that speech would have made me laugh, or roll my eyes. Then again, a lot of men wouldn’t haveread Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic story ofThe Little Prince, or bothered to try and understand it.I reached for his hand and held it between both of mine. “The fox tells the Little Prince he is a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. Just like the flower was like a hundred thousand other flowers.”Dan tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with the hand I wasn’t holding. “But the fox asked the prince to tame him.To make it so they’d need each other and be unique to each other. And he did it.”“And then the prince went away, Dan, and left the fox bereft.” I looked down at my hands, holding his.“Would you be sad if I left you?” He asked me, and at first I wasn’t sure how I would reply.At last the answer came on breath as tremulous as a breeze wafting curtains from an open window.“Yes. I would.”He squeezed my hand. “Then I won’t.”

“All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people.”

“Abandoning a task that is futile and pointless is not giving up.”

“What are you wearing?”I looked down at my soft flannel pajamas. I’d washed them so many times the plaid pattern had faded mostly to grays and whites. “What do you want me to be wearing?”Dan’s voice shifted a little. I imagined a smile. “Nothing.”Such a small thing, that little bit of flirting, but all at once I felt as if air had rushed into my lungs, and I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. “Nothing but a smile.”

“...tenía los Seis Síntomas Mortales de un Hombre Enamorado:1. Incapacidad para pensar derecho.2. Una alarmante propensión a sonreír en los momentos más extraños.3. Pensamiento constante en el objeto de su deseo.4. Absolutamente ningún interés en otros miembros del sexo opuesto.5. Una sorprendente buena voluntad hacia el mundo en general.6. Excitación sexual perpetúa.”

“I closed my eyes against the suddensorrow that someone I knew so well should be someone who consistently brought me so much grief.”

“I had no words to give him. No explanation. I didn’t understand it, myself. It scared me, but then so do roller coasters, and I ride them anyway, too.”

“I could say his body was perfect and every part of it beautiful, because it was. Not because he had no flaws, but because I wanted him so desperately I couldn’t see any.”

“Sex makes bumble-tongued fools even out of the most eloquent, but the beauty of it is that it also tunes our ears to hear the meaning of words that, spoken under other circumstances, would make us laugh or cry or frown.”

“We're not meant to separate sex from love; there's a reason why euphoria occurs in both situations. Sex and love nourish each other. You can argue it's humanity's way of establishing family groups and guaranteeing creation of the next generation; but the simple fact remains: the more often two people engage in sex, the more likely it is that one of them will fall in love.”

“They were all you, to me. All of them were you.”

“There is so much freedom in not having to choose.”

“If it's true, does it have to be nice? If you have something true to say, but you don't say it because you just want to be nice, isn't that sort of like a lie?”

“Good things, by their nature, are fleeting. It’s those that bring us grief that linger.”

“We are often our own harshest critics”

“A good sister is one who won't be embarrassed when you burst into tears in public. A better one will hand you tissues until you stop. The best is the one who will go get you another latte to go with the ginormous chocolate orgy she's already laid in front of you.”

“It was all about control, in the end, and I had it.”

“Choices. We all make them, sometimes more than once. Sometimes it's the choices we make over and over that define us, but more often it's the choices we don't make.”

“No matter how hard you worked, there was always going to be somebody out there who thought you were fuckup.”

“If you're lucky, the friends you make when you're sixteen stay with you for the rest of your life. If you're smart, you know when it's time to let them go.”

“One must have sorrow to truly appreciate joy.”

“I have seen clouds part for the sun. I have seen rainbows. I have seen flowers in the morning, covered in dew, and I have seen sunsets so brilliant with fire they made me want to weep. And I have seen Dan smile at me, his lips still wet from my kiss, and if I had to choose which sight moved me the most I would say it was that one.”

“It’s okay to struggle to find our place in this world and the person who will take us for who and what we are. Sometimes we dress ourselves in layers that only get peeled away in the end, to leave us as we should be.”

“Memory can refuse to let you forget what you’d like to and run away with what you want to remember. It’s an unreliable bitch, or your best friend. Sometimes, it’s both at once.”

“He put my fingertips to his mouth and kissed them. Licked the trace of blood away. Made them clean.Then I knew the truth I had been denying. He made me clean. Dan made me clean and shining and bright. He made me beautiful, and I did not want to lose him.”

“All I know with utter certainty is this. Dan tamed me. We need each other.He has become unique to me in all the world.”

“He hadn’t been her first lover or the first boy to give her an orgasm. He hadn’t even been the first she’d loved. He’d been the first to turn her inside out with something as simple as a smile. The first to make her doubt herself. He’d taken her deeper than anyone ever had, and yet she hadn’t drowned. ”

“Bess had become the ocean, always breaking against the rocks but never staying broken. Her love was the ocean, too, endless and always changing, yet forever the same.”

“Quien no ha sentido nunca algo así no tiene derecho a juzgar, y quien lo ha sentido no necesita hacerlo.”

“Te he visto una vez al mes durante dos años, y no era el único que contaba historias; lo único que pasa es que era el que usaba más palabras”

“You can't hurt someone who doesn't care about you.”

“There are few times when we know with absolute certainty we are going to do something for the last time. Life has a way of moving in circles, bringing us back to places we didn’t expectand taking us away from those we do. There are too many times we don’t pay close enough attention, and moments are lost in our assumption we’ll have another chance.”

“Dangerous to me, that sexuality, because I'd been burned by that flame once before and would be forever scorched.”

“I'd known him less then forty-eight hours and already I'd seen how he looked when he came, tasted his cooking, and had my ass handed to me playing Dance Dance Revolution, and now I was going to practically be living with him.”

“Sometimes when things break, you can hold them together fora while with string or glue or tape. Sometimes, nothing will holdwhat’s broken, and the pieces fly all over, and though you think youmight be able to find them all again, one or two will always bemissing.I flew apart. I broke. I shattered like a crystal vase dropped on aconcrete floor, and pieces of me scattered all over. Some of them Iwas glad to see go. Some I never wanted to see again.”

“I wanted to get in the car and drive, just drive. Just get to you. That’s all I could think of, wasgetting to you. But I knew I had to sober up first. So I went out, to the beach. I thought if Iwalked awhile that might help. And it was cold, you know? The water was cold. I thought if Isplashed some on my face…well, if I took a swim. That would help. I thought I’d only jump in, get wet. I thought it would only take a few minutes and I could be on my way. To you.”His voice snagged like a burr on silk. Heat leaked from the corners of Bess’s eyes and slipped between her lips. Salt water. Always salt water.I was stupid,” Nick whispered.You didn’t know,” she whispered back.It took my feet out from under me. And all I could think of was how you were waiting, and I was going to fuck it all up again. How I was going to let you down.”

“A woman's orgasm is such a fragile thing, dependant as much upon her mind as on her clitoris.”

“There seemed to be so much to say, but no words adequate to say it.”

“There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.”

“But the problem with looking back when you should be walking ahead is that you usually end up walking into something that hurts.”

“I waited for a long time and there was nothing but the pain of wanting something I couldn't seem to find.”

“We were broken, brittle and fragile. The question was, were we still precious to each other? Or, instead of everything falling into place, had it fallen into pieces?”

“I was trying to replace something I'd come to care about very much with something pretending to be as important.”

“I've done my best to drive you away, Sadie," he said suddenly. "But you've never left me.”

“He was quiet. I said nothing, hoping that maybe, for once, he'd stop pretending he was okay. Then I could, too. That we could both forget the roles that had so long bound us.”

“If I'd known it was going to be the last time he'd ever hold me, I'd have paid better attention.”

“My head's filled up with all the reasons it won't work. And I keep running the figures, over and over, but I can't seem to come up with an answer.”

“From the first time you laughed with me, all those months, and all those stories,” Joe said quietly. “They were all you, to me. All of them were you.”