Book Lovers

Even if it hurts, when he shimmers across my mind, it’s like remembering a favorite book. One that left you gutted, sure, but also one that changed you forever.

“Of course I love you, Nora. If I loved you any less, I’d be trying to convince you that you could be happy here. You have no idea how badly I wish I could be enough.”

It’s never taken effort—that’s what made me fall in love with reading: the instant floating sensation, the dissolution of real-world problems, every worry suddenly safely on the other side of some metaphysical surface.

“It’s hard to think in words right now, Nora.”

Maybe this is why people take trips, for that feeling of your real life liquefying around you, like nothing you do will tug on any other strand of your carefully built world. It’s a feeling not unlike reading a really good book: all-consuming, worry-obliterating.

“The more you tell a person about yourself, the more power you hand over”

“It’s always better to have the truth up front than to be misled”

“I loved those nights. They taught me that heartbreak, like most things, was a solvable puzzle. A checklist could guide a person through mourning. There was an actionable plan for moving on”

“I didn’t know it was possible to miss a person this much while she was sitting right next to you, so badly everything in you aches”

«This is why crushes are terrible. You go from feeling like life is a flat path one needs only to cruise over to spending every second on an incline, or caught in a weightless, stomach-in-your-throat drop. It’s Mom running out to catch a cab, hair curled and smiling lips painted, only to come home with streaks of mascara down her face. Highs and lows, and nothing in between.»

«It starts with Chapter One. Always a good sign that an author hasn’t gone full Jack-Torrance-locked-up-with-his-typewriter-in-the-Overlook.»

«I’m used to rats—most run away at the sight of a person, and the rest basically just hold out tiny hats to beg for bits of pizza. Mosquitoes are worse.»

“You’ve never needed me—”“Of course I don’t!” I’ve worked hard to build a life that’s my own, that no one else could pull a plug on to send me swirling down a cosmic drain.

It’s not casual dating if you know the other person’s blood type.”“I do not know my dates’ blood types,” I say. “All I need from them is a full credit report, a psych eval, and a blood oath.”

“I’m going to see this movie five hundred times,” Libby tells me. “Consecutively.”“Wear a diaper,” I advise.“Not necessary,” she says. “I’ll be crying too much. There won’t be any pee in my body.”“I had no idea you had such a . . . comprehensive understanding of science,” I say.“The last time I read it, I cried so hard I pulled a muscle in my back.”“You should consider exercising more.”“Rude.”

Mom’s theory was that youthful skin would make a woman more money (true in both acting and waitressing), good underwear would make her more confident (so far, so true), and good books would make her happy (universal truth), and we’ve clearly both packed with this theory in mind.

This costs 99 cents. . . . . . . . . . . .I reply, I know—such a bargain! If my professionalism is a gel manicure, then Charlie Lastra is apparently the industrial-grade acetone capable of burning right through it.I search his name on Venmo and send him ninety-nine cents. Another email comes in a second later. He’s sent the dollar back to me, with the note, I’m a grown man, Nora. I can buy my own Bigfoot erotica, thank you very much.

I write, What page are you on?Three, he says. And I already need an exorcism.