Цитаты из книги The Best Thing

I could look into his eyes and listen to his voice and ignore those memories of how much I had enjoyed those two things at one point.

I hit the answer button and didn’t bother trying to hide the tension in my voice. “Grandpa.”

“How’s my favorite demon?” he answered like he always did when he was in a really good mood

“Are you in the mood for Pho Palace?” I asked. “I can meet you there in fifteen.”

“Meet you there in thirty,” he agreed a second before hanging up, not waiting for me to confirm thirty was good and not bothering to say bye. He never did. He said the b-word sounded too final.

That and I think he just liked hanging up on people

If you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all

She was my seven-pound, eight-ounce surprise when she’d been born. The instant love of my life. The best thing I ever did.

When you wanted something to work, you made it work.

I grabbed my stress ball again, immediately squeezing the fuck out of it.

And if I was imagining it was somebody’s balls… whatever.

I watched in slow motion as his fingertips—long and with signs at the joints that said that nearly all of them had been broken at some point—brushed over the back of my hand so gently it might have been nice… if I didn’t borderline hate him.

“He left me,” I tried to tell him, struggling a whole hell of a lot with getting that reality out. Acknowledging it. Tasting it. But even if something seemed good, didn’t mean it actually was. Saying it didn’t make it any less abrasive… but maybe one day it would. Maybe. “But not her.”

Me. Not her.

And I was fine with that.

But as perfect as she was, I focused in on my favorite part of her. Her honey-colored eyes with flecks of gold and brown in them. Big and already almond-shaped.

They were the eyes she’d inherited from her dad.

Brushing my fingers lightly into her side just enough to make her squeal again, I dipped my face close, blowing a bubble into her tiny almost nonexistent neck, getting a slightly louder squeal out of her. Her whole body shook with delight and something so pure, it was fucking priceless. It was something to think that I had made this. That she was mine and I was hers, and that there wasn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do for her.

Then she smiled and grabbed the collar of my shirt and tried to tug it toward her, choking me a little in the process.

It was then I remembered why I was here. Why I’d just gone through this conversation. How the hell this child made me a weak bitch and a stronger bitch at the same time was beyond me.

This wasn’t about me anymore.

This was about the baby chewing away at a toy in a way that made my nipples have PTSD from when I had breastfed her before she’d decided she was done with my boobs.

“I’d take a cup of tea if you have any.”

I forgot about how much he liked tea, I thought randomly, annoyed I remembered that detail.

“We don’t have any,” I answered, sounding bitchy, even though it was the truth.

Maybe he didn’t remember how he had stood in front of me the day before his game—match, whatever—held my face in between those big hands, and said, We should go to the catacombs when I get back from Toulouse, yeh?

We never made it to the catacombs.

I had never made it to the catacombs.

I had thought for a long time that his quiet confidence had been his most attractive trait. More than his body. More than his smile. More than his face and how cheery he’d been.