Rebecca Flowers

“More in-betweens: late afternoon, early spring, adolescence, falling in love. She hated the in-betweens. Always, she just wanted to get where she was going – to be there already, She was almost paralyzed by the in-betweenness. She didn’t know how she was supposed to behave.”

“You know how you’re at a party and you pick up the wrong beer, and you know after one sip that it’s not yours? But then, when you find the right one, you know it right away? Why? What is it? The temperature, or the taste of your own spit that you somehow recognize? Or the weight and moistness of the can? Or maybe everything, all together. But it’s all so subtle and complex you can’t explain it. If someone asked, How do you know that’s your beer? well, you wouldn’t know what to say. You just know.”

“She was getting over it. She could feel it. Maybe she would never entirely be over him, but she thought she was beginning to see that a fairly normal future could be hers again.”

“Listen,” he said, raising himself up on one elbow. “You don’t just decide one day you’re going to run a marathon, right? You have to do some training first.”“Aren’t you being glib about this?”His hands slid around her, inside her sweater, touching her naked back.Everything in her wanted to melt. Oh, just let it go, she told herself. “Am I the marathon?”He smiled and nodded. “The New York Marathon.”“The Boston is harder," she muttered.“Okay, you’re the Boston, then.”“And what was she? Just a little warm-up?”“She was like a 5K,” he said, so near her ear that she got goose bumps. “Well…maybe a 10K.”

“So being single and childless had its merits. For dang sure.”

“Do you remember that scene in Airplane! where the guy with the flags is waving a jet into its gate, then someone asks him where the bathrooms are, so he begins gesturing in the other direction?""So the jet crashes into the airport. Yes.""That's how it is, with him. I think I'm getting these signals, you know, and it turns out he's just looking for the toilet.”

“Dear, he was the bad dress of men - a bit too short and clinging to you in all the wrong places.”