“think of him risking everything each time he slips one napkin into his pocket. All these years he’s been so careful, but now he’s willing to take a chance. Because he’s found someone who wants to know. Someone he wants to tell.”

“He’s waiting. He’s still waiting. He’s given up everything for me. His entire life. His future. Everything, because he wants to keep me safe. Because he believes, in his heart, that he’s my purpose and I’m his.”

“He says he had to go help someone in a desperate situation. Who,exactly, he refuses to say. He doesn’t know when he’s going to be back, but suggests we putoff the wedding for a few days. The rotter! How dare he just zoom off and not tell me wherehe’s going, or who he’s going to help, or what exactly he’s up to!”Yeah, how dare he go out and be all heroic and stuff when you want him here slobberingover your big boobs.”

“Ten minutes ago, Frank though he was going to prison. Now he knows he’s not, and part of him thinks he should just be glad he’s getting out of this at all, but he’s not. He’s not glad. He’s furious. He’s known the world is broken for a long time, he’s known that, but sometimes he’s amazed at how broken; even now, at this point in his life, nearing fifty years old, he can stumble across something that makes him realize all over again that the world is not only broken, but beyond fixing. No amount of glue can ever make it right. And yet, you have to focus on your little part of it, don’t you? You have to focus on your little corner of the world and glue what cracks you can. Otherwise there’s no hope at all.”

“On a distant battlefield, somewhere in the Middle East, Sergeant Jackson is sick of this fucking war and stands up from behind the trench he’s hiding in, ignores the pleas of his squad mates to get down and starts to play the electric guitar he’s insisted he bring into battle with him. He plays a song: his father’s favourite. He’s spent years learning it and he thinks it’s beautiful. The first bullet kills him. Someone takes a picture as he falls. A dying soldier clutching his electric guitar.”

“And he leans in, so carefully. Breathingand not breathing and hearts beatingbetween us and he’s so close, he’s so close and I can’t feel my legs anymore. I can’t feel my fingers or the cold or the emptiness of this room because all I feel is him, everywhere,filling everything and he whispers“Please.”He says “Please don’t shoot me for this.”And he kisses me.His lips are softer than anything I've ever known, soft like a first snowfall, like biting into cotton candy, like melting and floating and being weightless in water. It’s sweet, it’sso effortlessly sweet.And then it changes.“Oh God—”He kisses me again, this time stronger,desperate, like he has to have me, like he’s dying to memorize the feel of my lips against his own. The taste of him is making me crazy; he’s all heat and desire and peppermint and I want more. I've just begun reeling him in, pulling him into me when he breaks away.He’s breathing like he’s lost his mind andhe’s looking at me like something has brokeninside of him, like he’s woken up to find thathis nightmares were just that, that they never existed, that it was all just a bad dream that felt far too real but now he’s awake and he’s safe and everything is going to be okay andI’m falling.I’m falling apart and into his heart and I’m a disaster.”