“some mornings... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me.”

“It's finished. Everything went past, without me.”

“I want someone who will adore me so much that they cannot even walk past me without touching me in some way. I want someone who will worship me, even when.. I'm sitting around in fluffy slippers with no makeup on and hair scraped back.I'm sick and tired of being on my own. Most of the time I'm fine. Some of the time I even quite enjoy it. But at this precise moment in time I'm fed up with it. I've had enough..”

“after Mother died I could look at a photograph of her till kingdom come, but it never game me back what it was to sit across the kitchen table from her flesh and bones, never gave me back the feeling, you know. The inside of the feeling.”

“I feel a shaking in me, and it's the ground. It's like the ground is shaking and I will slip through.Then, in a flash, his hands reach out and, like in a movie, really, the coffee cup falls to the cement steps with a sharp crack, and he grabs my arms and his face is filled with everything that is urgent and loving and meaningful in the world.I feel so powerful, like a god, thunderbolt in hand.And my thunderbolt hit.”

“Morning, Ms. Mary, I will be back to help as soon as I get changed.” Ms. Mary cut her eyes toward me and back toward the table with a frown. I followed her gaze. Leaning back in a kitchen chair, looking ridiculously sexy for seven in the morning, sat Jax. He gave me a crooked grin, and my heart went into frenzy. “Hey,” I said this without sounding affected by his presence. I know he’d said he would be hanging out in the kitchen more often, but I hadn’t realized he meant this early in the morning. “What? Why are you here?” He raised his eyebrows and grinned at me. “I would have thought that would have been obvious.” I knew I was blushing.”