“
A faerie heart is different from a human heart. Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again. Faerie hearts are evolutionarily less sophisticated. They are small and hard, like tiny grains of sand. Our hearts are too small to love more than one person in a lifetime.
”
”
Jodi Lynn Anderson (Tiger Lily)
“
Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives — he didn’t belong to the library, so he’d never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:
Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
“
But our hearts are more elastic than we think, and the work of forgiveness and transformation and growth can do things you can't even imagine from where you're standing now.
”
”
Shauna Niequist (Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way)
“
But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.
”
”
Mark Twain
“
My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself - not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest.
”
”
George MacDonald (Phantastes)
“
Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again.
”
”
Jodi Lynn Anderson (Tiger Lily)
“
The woman I would have to let go of if I wanted to keep my career was the same woman I didn’t want to live without.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
The human imagination may be the most elastic thing in the universe, stretching to encompass the millions of dreams that in centuries of relectless struggle built modern civilization, to entertain the endless doubts that hamper every human enterprise, and to conceive the vast menagerie of boogeymen that trouble every human heart.
”
”
Dean Koontz (The Taking)
“
You make me desperate for you, Nicole,” he growled, cradling the back of my head and crashing my lips to his. “You’re fucking mine.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
For anybody who thinks love only exists in fairy tales— Love is limitless. Believe.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
I enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind; and if I was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall soon cease to be -- a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
“
It came down to that flexibility of a person’s mind. An ability to withstand horrors and snap back, like a fresh elastic band. A flinty mind shattered. In this way, he was glad not to be an adult. A grown-up’s mind—even one belonging to a decent man like Scoutmaster Tim—lacked that elasticity. The world had been robbed of all its mysteries, and with those mysteries went the horror. Adults didn’t believe in old wives’ tales. You didn’t see adults stepping over sidewalk cracks out of the fear that they might somehow, some way, break their mothers’ backs. They didn’t wish on stars: not with the squinty-eyed fierceness of kids, anyway. You’ll never find an adult who believes that saying “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a mirror in a dark room will summon a dark, blood-hungry entity. Adults were scared of different things: their jobs, their mortgages, whether they hung out with the “right people,” whether they would die unloved. These were pallid compared to the fears of a child—leering clowns under the bed and slimy monsters capering beyond the basement’s light and faceless sucking horrors from beyond the stars. There’s no 12-step or self-help group for dealing with those fears. Or maybe there is: you just grow up. And when you do, you surrender the nimbleness of mind required to believe in such things—but also to cope with them. And so when adults find themselves in a situation where that nimbleness is needed . . . well, they can’t summon it. So they fall to pieces: go insane, panic, suffer heart attacks and aneurysms brought on by fright. Why? They simply don’t believe it could be happening. That’s what’s different about kids: they believe everything can happen, and fully expect it to.
”
”
Nick Cutter (The Troop)
“
I’ll do whatever it takes if it makes you cave to this,” he said, lowering his voice.
“You’re not afraid of the consequences anymore?” I asked.
“I am.” He paused, his eyes searching mine. “I think you might be worth it, though.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Yet for some reason I’m around this guy for two seconds and I become a fifteen-year-old girl at a One Direction concert.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Nic?” he asked, his voice low and near my ear. My stomach did a flip-flop.
“Yeah?” I whispered.
“You’re going to have to learn to breathe when you’re near me. We’ll be doing this a lot.”
My head whipped toward him, and he reared back slightly to put a little distance between our faces.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said.
“So I’ve been told.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Here’s to the misfits and foolish ones who think differently. They’re not fond of simplicity. They live unconventionally existing at a different level of intensity. They add elasticity and flexibility to what’s inflexibly rigid, bringing warmth to the frigid systems of existence. You can hate them acidicly, discredit their credibility or even oppose them ritualistically. Look down on them cynically, say they became great accidentally, rain on them torrentially or see brilliance academically. You can look and see density or see a lovely symphony. About the only thing you can’t do is disqualify their eligibility. Because they change history. Everything in existence moves them restlessly on to destiny backed by infinity. Their spirit is immensity, they overcome resiliently and follow their hearts existentially. Though they may be misunderstood until the next century, we see their opponents’ adrenaline as only minimally convincing, simply for a time because in them there’s a tendency for the divine to visit earth coincidentally. And while others may see misfits and foolishness we see wisdom and genius because the ones crazy enough to think they can live and love limitlessly are the ones who actually do.
”
”
Curtis Tyrone Jones
“
My attention caught on something. I dropped my gaze to his grip on me, to the elastic band on his wrist. “What is . . .?” I trailed off when I realized what it was. And only because I’d worn the same wide-banded black hair ties since I could remember. My heart picked up as the memory came back, of him slipping that hair tie into his pocket while I was naked in his bed three years before. The surprise hit me so hard I went on the offensive. “That’s mine,” I accused, like it was something important he’d stolen from me. I reached for it as if to take it back, but he stopped me by grabbing that wrist, too. “It’s mine now.
”
”
Danielle Lori (The Maddest Obsession (Made, #2))
“
If his heart was elastic, it had snapped in two.
”
”
Alexandria Bellefleur (Hang the Moon (Written in the Stars, #2))
“
I swear
we'd lose our
hearts if
they weren't
with elastic
and butterfly
pin
clasped safely
in.
”
”
Todd Boss
“
Are you mine and no one else’s?”
He smiled, caressing my face with his thumb as he brought his lips down to mine. “Always yours. I was never anybody else’s.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
But if that were the case, why did I feel like he was ripping out my heart?
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Give a little time to me or burn this out, We’ll play hide and seek to turn this around, All I want is the taste that your lips allow . . .” ~Ed Sheeran
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Your young heart is a wild, elastic thing. Now, I fear that age and time and experience stretches it too hard, too far, and it will never snap back.
”
”
Karina Halle (The Offer (The McGregor Brothers, #2))
“
Well I've got a thick skin and an elastic heart
”
”
Choon Ling Sia
“
My heart is elastic. I realize it for the first time. For so long I thought there was a limit to how much love I could hold and who I could give it to. But life is so much more dynamic than that. Love doesn’t disappear when you give it away, and new love doesn’t make old love any less legitimate.
”
”
Julie Murphy (Ramona Blue: A YA Story of Questioning Your Identity and Finding Love in Unexpected Places)
“
I want you,” he said. I gasped as his fingers dug into my flesh. “I want you and I can’t have you if I keep working for you.”
“Says who?” I asked, surprised my voice was loud enough for him to hear me.
“I’ve worked so fucking hard and this case is going to blow it all to shit,” he said, inching his face closer to mine. I stopped breathing. “All because I need this more than I’ve needed anything else in my fucking life.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
THE CAT Come, superb cat, to my amorous heart; Hold back the talons of your paws, Let me gaze into your beautiful eyes Of metal and agate. When my fingers leisurely caress you, Your head and your elastic back, And when my hand tingles with the pleasure Of feeling your electric body, In spirit I see my woman. Her gaze Like your own, amiable beast, Profound and cold, cuts and cleaves like a dart, And, from her head down to her feet, A subtle air, a dangerous perfume Floats about her dusky body.
”
”
Charles Baudelaire (The Flowers of Evil / Les Fleurs du Mal (English and French Edition))
“
Tanaka’s lab has pioneered new research on swimming’s effects on two of the biggest hallmarks of aging: high blood pressure and arthritis. “Over the last four or five years, a funky thing happened—we realized that the effects of swimming actually surpassed the magnitude of the effects of walking or cycling,” he tells me. “None of us knew that before.” Average reduction in blood pressure after land-based exercise training is five to seven points. Swimming, he found, reduces blood pressure by an average of nine points—in the blood-pressure world, that’s significant. It also decreases arterial stiffness, a condition in which the walls of your arteries become less elastic and add strain to the heart muscle.
”
”
Bonnie Tsui (Why We Swim)
“
that strange elasticity of the human heart in finding new relationships, new people to share one’s life with, new potentials.
”
”
Dan Simmons (The Rise of Endymion (Hyperion Cantos, #4))
“
34 C, baby,” he said loudly. I felt my face turn a shade of red as a woman walked by us. She shot me an amused look.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Forgiving, caring, always willing to give people a second chance until you fucked up again, in which case she’d put you on her shit list.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Breathe. Suck in your stomach. Smile. No. Don’t smile.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
I understand, and I’m sorry to break it to you, but I’m not looking to hook up with you. Been there, done that, bought the shirt.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
I rarely did that, but I figured because of the time it had to be UPS
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Talon gasped. “I am thirty-two, thank you very much, and Harry is hot.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
He was not a big deal. He looked short. I was sure his hair made Oliver jealous, though, so I snapped a picture of him and sent it,
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
Do you do this much for all of your clients?” I asked…
“I think you know I don’t,” he whispered, still holding my face. “And I think you know this has passed the client boundary by now.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Elastic Hearts (Hearts, #3))
“
In her memoir of living among the Bushmen, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, my friend Liz lovingly invokes an image first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: “You are standing beside your mother, holding her hand. She is holding her mother’s hand, who is holding her mother’s hand. . . . ” Eventually the line stretches three hundred miles long and goes back five million years, and the clasping hand of the ancestor looks like that of a chimpanzee. I loved picturing one of Octavia’s arms stretching out to meet one of her mother’s arms, and one of her mother’s mother’s arms, and her mother’s mother’s mother’s. . . . Suckered, elastic arms, reaching back through time: an octopus chorus line stretching not just hundreds, but many thousands of miles long. Back past the Cenozoic, the time when our ancestors descended from the trees; back past the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs ruled the land; back past the Permian and the rise of the ancestors of the mammals; back, past the Carboniferous’s coal-forming swamp forests; back past the Devonian, when amphibians emerged from the water; back past the Silurian, when plants first took root on land—all the way to the Ordovician, to a time before the advent of wings or knees or lungs, before the fishes had bony jaws, before blood pumped from a multichambered heart. More than 500 million years ago, the tides would have been stronger, the days shorter, the year longer, and the air too high in carbon dioxide for mammals or birds to breathe. All the earth’s continents huddled in the Southern Hemisphere. And yet still, the arm of Octavia’s ancestor, sensitive, suckered, and supple, would have been recognizable as one of an octopus.
”
”
Sy Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness)
“
Listen,” Older Self might say. “The things that right now seem permanently out of reach, you’ll reach them eventually. You’ll have a career, a house, a partner in life. You will have much better shoes. You will reach a point where your funds will generally be sufficient—maybe not always plentiful, but sufficient.” But here’s what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to—the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go—will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you’d never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never meant to be anything more than passing thoughts you had while playing your stereo at night.
”
”
Meghan Daum (The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion)
“
And yet he hailed the morning on which he had resolved to quit London, with a light heart, and sprang from his bed with an elasticity of spirit which is happily the lot of young persons, or the world would never be stocked with old ones.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)
“
Words got me into trouble. They are the deadliest weapons of all, so that now the gun seems almost innocent by comparison. I fired the shot to stop the words; they were so busy eating everything up. You have no idea how I hate words, how i see them winding out of people's mouths like sticky strands of a web, infinitely elastic, linking the speaker to the listener forever, and finally weaving an impermeable cocoon around the mind and then the poor, fast-beating heart itself.
”
”
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (The Madness of a Seduced Woman)
“
Arsonist's Lullabye by Hozier – Chapter three Elastic Heart by Sia – Chapter Nine Paralyzed by NF – Chapter Seventeen Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush – Chapter Twenty You Broke Me First by Tate McRae – Chapter Twenty-three Let Me Down by Jorja Smith and Stormzy – Chapter Twenty-four I Can’t Make You Love Me by Teddie Swims – Chapter Thirty Dancing with a Stranger by Sam Smith – Chapter Thirty-one Demons by Jacob Lee – Chapter Thirty-Three Halo by Beyonce – Chapter Thirty-six Play with
”
”
Bea Paige (Lyrical (Academy of Stardom, #2))
“
It's very curious, but the more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more I seem to want. I'd no idea hearts could take in so many. Mine is so elastic, it never seems full now, and I used to be quite contented with my family. I don't understand it.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Signature Editions))
“
my heart. So I fancied that your boy might fill the empty place if he tried now." "No, Mother, it is better as it is, and I'm glad Amy has learned to love him. But you are right in one thing. I am lonely, and perhaps if Teddy had tried again, I might have said 'Yes', not because I love him any more, but because I care more to be loved than when he went away." "I'm glad of that, Jo, for it shows that you are getting on. There are plenty to love you, so try to be satisfied with Father and Mother, sisters and brothers, friends and babies, till the best lover of all comes to give you your reward." "Mothers are the best lovers in the world, but I don't mind whispering to Marmee that I'd like to try all kinds. It's very curious, but the more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more I seem to want. I'd no idea hearts could take in so many. Mine is so elastic, it never seems full now, and I used to be quite contented with my family. I don't understand it." "I do," and Mrs. March smiled her wise smile, as Jo turned back the leaves to read what Amy said of Laurie. "It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me. He isn't sentimental, doesn't say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don't seem to be the same girl I
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Illustrated))
“
Whether we can somehow listen in on tree talk is a subject that was recently addressed in the specialized literature. Korean scientists have been tracking older women as they walk through forests and urban areas. The result? When the women were walking in the forest, their blood pressure, their lung capacity, and the elasticity of their arteries improved, whereas an excursion into town showed none of these changes. It's possible that phytoncides have a beneficial effect on our immune systems as well as the trees' health, because they kill germs. Personally, however, I think the swirling cocktail of tree talk is the reason we enjoy being out in the forest so much. At least when we are out in undisturbed forests.
Walkers who visit one of the ancient deciduous preserves in the forest I manage always report that their heart feels lighter and they feel right at home. If they walk instead through coniferous forests, which in Central Europe are mostly planted and are, therefore, more fragile, artificial places, they don't experience such feelings. Possibly it's because in ancient beech forests, fewer "alarm calls" go out, and therefore, most messages exchanged between trees are contented ones, and these messages reach our brains as well, via our noses. I am convinced that we intuitively register the forest's health.
”
”
Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World)
“
All at once he found his mind drawing a parallel between that destiny and his own existence; all at once questions of life arose before his vision, like owls in an ancient ruin flushed from sleep by a stray ray of sunlight. Somehow he felt pained and grieved at his arrested development, at the check which had taken place in his moral growth, at the weight which appeared to be pressing upon his every faculty. Also gnawing at his heart there was a sense of envy that others should be living a life so full and free, while all the time the narrow, pitiful little pathway of his own existence was being blocked by a great boulder. And in his hesitating soul there arose a torturing consciousness that many sides of his nature had never yet been stirred, that others had never even been touched, and that not one of them had attained complete formation. Yet with this there went an aching suspicion that, buried in his being, as in a tomb, there still remained a moribund element of sweetness and light, and that it was an element which, though hidden in his personality, as a nugget lies lurking in the bowels of the earth, might once have become minted into sterling coin. But the treasure was now overlaid with rubbish--was now thickly littered over with dust. 'Twas as though some one had stolen from him, and besmirched, the store of gifts with which life and the world had dowered him; so that always he would be prevented from entering life's field and sailing across it with the aid of intellect and of will.
Yes, at the very start a secret enemy had laid a heavy hand upon him and diverted him from the road of human destiny. And now he seemed to be powerless to leave the swamps and wilds in favour of that road.
All around him was a forest, and ever the recesses of his soul were growing dimmer and darker, and the path more and more tangled, while the consciousness of his condition kept awaking within him less and
less frequently--to arouse only for a fleeting moment his slumbering faculties. Brain and volition alike had become paralysed, and, to all appearances, irrevocably--the events of his life had become whittled
down to microscopical proportions. Yet even with them he was powerless to cope--he was powerless to pass from one of them to another. Consequently they bandied him to and fro like the waves of the ocean. Never was he able to oppose to any event elasticity of will; never was he able to conceive, as the result of any event, a reasoned-out impulse. Yet to confess this, even to himself, always cost him a bitter pang: his fruitless regrets for lost opportunities, coupled with burning reproaches of conscience, always pricked him like needles, and led him to strive to put away such reproaches and to discover a scapegoat.
”
”
Ivan Goncharov (Oblomov)
“
You hoped! Alas, to blight your hopes! I should love you, for you are charming and talented at many useless accomplishments. But many ladies have charm and accomplishments and are just as useless as you are. No, I don’t love you. But I do like you tremendously—for the elasticity of your conscience, for the selfishness which you seldom trouble to hide, and for the shrewd practicality in you which, I fear, you get from some not too remote Irish-peasant ancestor.” Peasant! Why, he was insulting her! She began to splutter wordlessly. “Don’t interrupt,” he begged, squeezing her hand. “I like you because I have those same qualities in me and like begets liking. I realize you still cherish the memory of the godlike and wooden-headed Mr. Wilkes, who’s probably been in his grave these six months. But there must be room in your heart for me too. Scarlett, do stop wriggling! I am making you a declaration. I have wanted you since the first time I laid eyes on you, in the hall at Twelve Oaks, when you were bewitching poor Charlie Hamilton. I want you more than I have ever wanted any woman—and I’ve waited longer for you than I’ve ever waited for any woman.
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
But here's what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to - the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go - will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you'd never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never meant to be anything more than passing thoughts you had while playing your stereo at night.
”
”
Meghan Daum (The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion)
“
Oh doors of your body
There are nine and I have opened them all
Oh doors of your body
There are nine and for me they have all closed again
At the first door
Clear Reason has died
It was do you remember? the first day in Nice
Your left eye like a snake slides
Even my heart
And let the door of your left gaze open again
At the second door
All my strength has died
It was do you remember? in a hostel in Cagnes
Your right eye was beating like my heart
Your eyelids throbbed like flowers beat in the breeze
And let the door of your right gaze open again
At the third door
Hear the aorta beat
And all my arteries swollen from your only love
And let the door of your left ear be reopened
At the fourth gate
They escort me every spring
And listening listening to the beautiful forest
Upload this song of love and nests
So sad for the soldiers who are at war
And let the door of your right ear reopen
At the fifth gate
It is my life that I bring you
It was do you remember? on the train returning from Grasse
And in the shade, very close, very short
Your mouth told me
Words of damnation so wicked and so tender
What do I ask of my wounded soul
How could I hear them without dying
Oh words so sweet so strong that when I think about it I seem to touch them
And let the door of your mouth open again
At the sixth gate
Your gestation of putrefaction oh War is aborting
Behold all the springs with their flowers
Here are the cathedrals with their incense
Here are your armpits with their divine smell
And your perfumed letters that I smell
During hours
And let the door on the left side of your nose be reopened
At the seventh gate
Oh perfumes of the past that the current of air carries away
The saline effluvia gave your lips the taste of the sea
Marine smell smell of love under our windows the sea was dying
And the smell of the orange trees enveloped you with love
While in my arms you cuddled
Still and quiet
And let the door on the right side of your nose be reopened
At the eighth gate
Two chubby angels care for the trembling roses they bear
The exquisite sky of your elastic waist
And here I am armed with a whip made of moonbeams
Hyacinth-crowned loves arrive in droves.
And let the door of your soul open again
With the ninth gate
Love itself must come out
Life of my life
I join you for eternity
And for the perfect love without anger
We will come to pure and wicked passion
According to what we want
To know everything to see everything to hear
I gave up in the deep secret of your love
Oh shady gate oh living coral gate
Between two columns of perfection
And let the door open again that your hands know how to open so well
”
”
Guillaume Apollinaire
“
Still dark. The Alpine hush is miles deep. The skylight over Holly’s bed is covered with snow, but now that the blizzard’s stopped I’m guessing the stars are out. I’d like to buy her a telescope. Could I send her one? From where? My body’s aching and floaty but my mind’s flicking through the last night and day, like a record collector flicking through a file of LPs. On the clock radio, a ghostly presenter named Antoine Tanguay is working through Nocturne Hour from three till four A.M. Like all the best DJs, Antoine Tanguay says almost nothing. I kiss Holly’s hair, but to my surprise she’s awake: “When did the wind die down?”
“An hour ago. Like someone unplugged it.”
“You’ve been awake a whole hour?”
“My arm’s dead, but I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Idiot.” She lifts her body to tell me to slide out.
I loop a long strand of her hair around my thumb and rub it on my lip. “I spoke out of turn last night. About your brother. Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.” She twangs my boxer shorts’ elastic. “Obviously. Maybe I needed to hear it.”
I kiss her wound-up hair bundle, then uncoil it. “You wouldn’t have any ciggies left, perchance?”
In the velvet dark, I see her smile: A blade of happiness slips between my ribs. “What?”
“Use a word like ‘perchance’ in Gravesend, you’d get crucified on the Ebbsfleet roundabout for being a suspected Conservative voter. No cigarettes left, I’m ’fraid. I went out to buy some yesterday, but found a semiattractive stalker, who’d cleverly made himself homeless forty minutes before a whiteout, so I had to come back without any.”
I trace her cheekbones. “Semiattractive? Cheeky moo.”
She yawns an octave. “Hope we can dig a way out tomorrow.”
“I hope we can’t. I like being snowed in with you.”
“Yeah well, some of us have these job things. Günter’s expecting a full house. Flirty-flirty tourists want to party-party-party.”
I bury my head in the crook of her bare shoulder. “No.”
Her hand explores my shoulder blade. “No what?”
“No, you can’t go to Le Croc tomorrow. Sorry. First, because now I’m your man, I forbid it.”
Her sss-sss is a sort of laugh. “Second?”
“Second, if you went, I’d have to gun down every male between twelve and ninety who dared speak to you, plus any lesbians too. That’s seventy-five percent of Le Croc’s clientele. Tomorrow’s headlines would all be BLOODBATH IN THE ALPS AND LAMB THE SLAUGHTERER, and the a vegetarian-pacifist type, I know you wouldn’t want any role in a massacre so you’d better shack up”—I kiss her nose, forehead, and temple—“with me all day.”
She presses her ear to my ribs. “Have you heard your heart? It’s like Keith Moon in there. Seriously. Have I got off with a mutant?”
The blanket’s slipped off her shoulder: I pull it back. We say nothing for a while. Antoine whispers in his radio studio, wherever it is, and plays John Cage’s In a Landscape. It unscrolls, meanderingly. “If time had a pause button,” I tell Holly Sykes, “I’d press it. Right”—I press a spot between her eyebrows and up a bit—“there. Now.”
“But if you did that, the whole universe’d be frozen, even you, so you couldn’t press play to start time again. We’d be stuck forever.”
I kiss her on the mouth and blood’s rushing everywhere.
She murmurs, “You only value something if you know it’ll end.
”
”
David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks)