When my wife and I met, I couldn't talk to her - and my defense mechanism is sarcasm. I belittle someone with verbal pokes and prods. I did it to her out of complete awe. When friends introduced us, I said 'Hi' - and turned my back. Later, I called m...
There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put his hand to his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?" "The ot...
Clary felt suddenly annoyed. "When the self-congratulatory part of the evening is over, maybe we could get back to saving my best friend from being exsanguinated to death?" "Exsanguinated," said Jace, impressed. "That's a big word." "And you're a big...
Jace turned to look over his shoulder, the wind whipping his hair into tangles. "What are you thinking?" he called back to her. "Just how different everything down there is now, you know, now that I can see." "Everything down there is exactly the sam...
He’s a steamroller in my life and I like to be laid out flat. I like his hands on my chest, pushing me down whenever my back turns to the span of a bridge. His hands on my thighs, forcing me flat, flat, flat. Yes. Yes, I like that.
I had a dream about you. The Thursdays were back, and with them they brought hope. They were selling, and everybody was buying. I tried telling the people they shouldn’t buy, because if they just wait 24 hours, the product would be free. What the T...
I had a dream about you. You were so cute, and I was holding you for a long time. We went for a walk, happily strutting down the street. We saw a couple others but they weren’t having as much fun as we were. We arrived back home and I gave you a ki...
I told you," he whispers back. I can feel his breath just tickling the space behind my ear, making my hair prick up on my neck. "I like you." "You don't know me," I say quickly. "I want to, though.
I believed I would never trust another person for as long as I lived. Yet, I couldn't help but trust him; the decision was made before I even realized what was happening. He forced my soul back into innocent belief, not by empty words or false promis...
Cath probably should have texted Abel by now, just to tell him that she'd made it - but she wanted to wait until she felt more breezy and nonchalant. You can't take back texts. If you come off all moody and melancholy in a text, it just sits there in...
As she continues to answer questions about her employment, all these words mean little more to her now than I AM SOPHISTICATED, I AM WORTHY, I AM SOPHISTICATED, I AM WORTHY. She attempts the posture of a politician's wife, shoulders held back, dignif...
Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I’d gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were “stressed out”.
Jase props himself up on an elbow, looking at me for a minute without saying anything. His face gets an unreadable expression, and I wish I could take back walking over. Then he observes, “I’m guessing that’s a uniform.” Crap. I’d forgotten...
Through creativity, we are seamlessly connected and sustained as we pull back the veil, revealing beneath our differences and distinctive characteristics, human expression and the human experience are universal. It is the greatness of this experience...
Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me. The guitar is my conscience, too - whenever I've lost my way, it's brought me back to center; whenever I forget, i...
I sat back and looked at it. It was ugly, dark, uncontrolled. Like a monster's face. Or maybe what I saw there was my own face. I couldn't quite tell. Was the face the image of something evil or the image of myself? "Both," Bea muttered, as if I'd sp...
Every night when I watch you sleep, I breathe you in. Every time I make you smile, my heart beats a tad bit faster. You are the blood flowing through my veins. If I had to go back to the life I had before, I would go freaking insane.
And this is the potency a first kiss should have: it should be earned. The moments leading up to it should be as tense as a crossbow drawn back. The reader should want it as badly as the hero and heroine, and feel as satisfied and transported and tra...
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kidergarten. Then wen you hit puberty they take te crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on agebra, history, ect. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative b...
Time is clearly not our natural dimension. Thus it is that we are never really at home in time. Alternately, we find ourselves wishing to hasten the passage of time or to hold back the dawn. We can do neither, of course, but whereas the fish is at ho...
I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be so and painted only the ideal aspects of it - pictures in which there are no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers . . . only foxy grandpas who played baseball with kid...
