Why is it so hard to articulate love yet so easy to express disappointment?

I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't give you everything you wanted. I wasn't everything you wanted. You were everything I wanted.

...we’re just kids growing up on an island, doing bad things in pretty places.

I think grief and fear are going to come to him suddenly. They'll be undiluted and words won't work. We're all going to get hit and won't know how to hit back. I wish I knew the answers, how to help myself and the people who will hurt all around me.

The sun is shining, mynah birds are chattering, palm trees are swaying, so what. I'm in the hospital and I'm healthy. My heart is beating as it should. My brain is firing off messages that are loud and clear. My wife is on the upright hospital bed, positioned the way people sleep on airplanes, her body stiff, head cocked to the side. Her hands on her lap.

I don't ask what Alex sees in him because I'm afraid my disapproval will make her latch on to him even more. That's how it works. I'll have to pretend he doesn't bother me and that I don't want to drown him in the bay.

That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.