My first impulse is not to grab her or kiss her or yell at her. I simple want to touch her cheek, still flushed from the night's performance. I want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet-not miles, not continents, not years-and to take a callused finger to her face.
Gayle FormanIโve blamed her for all of this, for leaving, for ruining me. And maybe that was the seed of it, but from that one little seed grew this tumor of a flowering plant. And Iโm the one who nurtures it. I water it. I care for it.I nibble from its poison berries. I let it wrap around my neck, choking the air right out of me. Iโve done that. All by myself. All to myself.
Gayle FormanI might have been eleven years old and a little socially immature, but I recognized a gauntlet being thrown down when I saw it, and I had no choice but to take it up.
Gayle FormanFor the hundredth time tonight, Iโm back with Lulu, on Jacquesโs barge, the improbably named Viola. Sheโd just toldme the story of double happiness and we were arguing over the meaning. Sheโd thought it meant the luck of the boy getting the job and the girl. But Iโd disagreed. It was the couplet fitting together, the two halves finding each other. It was love. But maybe we were both wrong, and both right. Itโs not either or, not luck or love. Not fate or will. Maybe for double happiness, you need both.
Gayle Forman