Beside her, she can feel each breath he draws. How is it possible to be so close to a person and still not know what you are to each other? With baseball, it's simple. There's no mystery to what happens on the field because everything has a label -- ...
Hi,' he says. 'Hi,' she says back, and then to her great surprise, she begins to cry. 'You know,' Nick says as he hands her a tissue from the bedside table,' for all this talk about how you don't cry, you sure are sprouting a lot of water.
She filed those moments away like precious documents, wore them smooth with memory, collected them like bits of prayers.
She understands now what she, in all her worry, had forgotten. That even as she hesitates and wavers, even as she thinks too much and moves too cautiously, she doesn't always have to get it right. It's okay to look back, even as you move forward.
That was the thing about books, she was realizing; they could take you somewhere else entirely, it was true. but it wasn't the same thing as actually going there yourself.
And the geography of the thing--the geography of them--was completely and hopelessly wrong.
Here. There. Everywhere. Somewhere. Home.
The quiet between them had gone on for far too long now to pretend it was anything other than what it was. There were no more words; all that was left were two faintly beating hearts.
Maybe this was why Owen had been so desperate to travel, why she'd longed for it herself without ever really knowing why. It wasn't just that you got to be somewhere else entirely. It was that you got to be someone else entirely, too.
There was a lump in her throat as she watched him fidget with the buttons on his vest, and it struck her as the truest form of kindness, the most basic sort of love: to be worried about the one who was worrying about you.
What are you doing a study on right now?" "A study on the statistical probablity of love at first sight.
After all, it's one thing to run away when someone's chasing you. It's entirely another to be running all alone.
People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline...The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and ju...
The idea that their paths might have easily not crossed leaves her breathless, like a near-miss accident on a highway, and she can't help marveling at the sheer randomness of it all. Like any survivor of chance, she feels a quick rush of thankfulness...
Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?
He looks at her and smiles. "You're sort of dangerous, you know?" She stares at him. "Me?" "Yeah," he says sitting back. "I'm way too honest with you.
Her eyes travel down to where he's gripping the handle of her suitcase. "What're you doing?" she asks, blinking at him. "You looked like you needed some help." Hadley just stares at him. "And this way it's perfectly legal," he adds with a grin.
But she knew it would never happen. She had no intention of visiting him there. Even if she were open to the idea, as Mom and Dad both hoped she would be, the mathematics of it seemed utterly impossible to her. What was she supposed to do, spend Chri...
He was giving her the most important thing he could, the only way he knew how. He was a professor, a lover of stories, and he was building her a library in the same way other men might build their daughters houses.
