перш за все у цій книзі є 13-ий розділ з назвою "The Dream" - і це офіційно найкоротший розділ, який я будь-коли бачила. І його текст наступний:"I DREAMED ABOUT GUS Everett and woke up needing a shower." - це ВЕСЬ розділ! на цьому мене книга і зловила )
…His mouth pressed closed. The muscle in his jaw leapt. "What is this? What did I do?"
"Nothing." I turned toward the car, but Gus's body still blocked the door. "Move, Gus"
"This isn't fair," he said. "You're mad at me and I can't even try to fix it? What could I have possibly—"
"I'm not mad at you," I said.
"You are," he argued. I tried again to open the door. This time he moved aside to let me. "Please tell me, January."
"I'm not," I insisted, voice shaking dangerously. "I'm not mad at you. We're not even close enough for that. I'm just your casual acquaintance. It's not like we're friends."
Twin grooves rose from the insides of his eyebrows and his crooked mouth twisted. "Please," he said, almost out of breath. "Don't do this."
"Do what?" I demanded.
He threw his arms out to his sides. "I don't know!" he said. "Whatever this is."…
…Gus's eyes dipped to my mouth, then rose to my eyes. "I thought—think it's brave to believe in love. I mean, the lasting kind. To try for that, even knowing it can hurt you."
"And what about you?"
"What about me?" he murmured.
I needed to clear my throat but I didn't. It would be too obvious, what I was thinking, how I was feeling. "You don't think you ever will again?"
Gus stepped back, shoes crackling against the gravel. "It doesn't matter if I believe it can work or not," he said. "Not believing in "something doesn't stop you from wanting it. If you're not careful."
His gaze sent heat unfurling over me, the cold snapping painfully back into place against my skin when he finally turned back toward the bar. "Come on," he said. "Let's get that coffee."
Careful. Caution was something I had little of when it came to Gus Everett.
Case in point: my hangover the next morning.
I awoke to my first text from him.
It said only Ow…
…Dad saying things like, "Your mother has been a lot of people in the twenty years I've known her, and I've had a chance to fall in love with every single one of them, Janie. That's the key to marriage. You have to keep falling in love with every new version of each other, and it's the best feeling in the whole world."…
…I felt a little empty, a little light.
Happy. Not giddy or overjoyed, but that low, steady level of happiness that, in the best periods of life, rides underneath everything else, a buffer between you and the world you are walking over.
I was happy to be here, doing nothing with Gus, and even if it was temporary, it was enough for me to believe that someday I'd be okay again. Maybe not the exact same brand of it I'd been before Dad died—probably not—but a new kind, nearly as solid and safe.
I could feel the pain too, the low-grade ache I'd be left with if and when this thing between Gus and me imploded. I could perfectly imagine every sensation, in the pit of my stomach and the palms of my hands, the sharp pulses of loss that would remind me of how good it felt to stand here with him like this, but for once, I didn't think letting go was the answer.
I wanted to hold on to him, and this moment, for a while.
As if in agreement, Gus squeezed my hands in his. "I do, you know," he said. It was almost a whisper, a tender, rugged thing like Gus himself. "Care about you."
"I do," I told him. "Know that, I mean."
The tangerine light glinted over his teeth when he smiled, deepening the shadows in his rarely seen dimples, and we stayed there, letting nothing happen all around us…
…"No," I said. "I just want you to tell me how you feel. I want to know what it is you want."
"I'm going to mess this up," he said helplessly.
"Maybe!" I cried. "But that's not what I asked. Tell me what you want, Gus. Not why you can't have it, or what you think I want, or why you can't give that to me. Just tell me what you want for once. That's all I'm asking you to do."
"I want you," he said quietly. "I want you, in every way. I want to take you on dates and play with a fucking beach ball in a pool with you, but I'm a wreck, January.
"I'm trapped in a marriage with a woman who lives with another man, just waiting to be done. I'm on medicine. I'm in therapy. I'm trying to give up smoking for good and even to learn how to meditate—and while that's going on, while I'm a walking dumpster fire, I want you in a way I'm not sure either of us can handle. I don't want to hurt you and I don't want to feel what it would be like to lose you."
He stopped for a beat. In the dim half-light of the tent his face was all stark shadows, but his liquidy dark eyes glinted as if lit from within. He took a few breaths, then said in a soft murmur, "It doesn't mean I don't want you, January—I've always wanted you. It just means I also want you to be happy, and I'm scared I could never be the person who could give you that."
The intensity in his gaze settled, like he'd burned through every spark he had, and I loved his eyes like this too, all warm and raw and quiet. I touched the sides of his face and he looked into my eyes, still breathing hard. Warmth bubbled in my chest, spilling into my fingers as they curled around his sharp jaw.
"Then let me be happy with you, Gus," I said and kissed him softly, like the rare and tender thing he was.
His hands swept across my back, and he pulled me closer…
…"If we drank green smoothies like we drink alcohol, we would live forever."
"If we drank green smoothies like we drink alcohol, we would never leave the toilet, and that would do nothing to help you right now," Gus said…
…"Hey," she said finally. "I think it was time."
"What was?" I asked.
"I think it was time for you to fall in love," she said. "All this time I've known you and I've never gotten to see it. I think it was time."
"You knew me before Jacques. You watched that happen."
"Yeah." Shadi gave a shrug. "I know you loved Jacques. And maybe in the end, it's the same thing you wind up with, but with him, you never fell, Janie. You marched straight in."
"So falling's the part that hurts?" I asked with a humorless laugh. "And if you wind up in love without it hurting, then there's no falling?"
"No," Shadi said seriously. "Falling's the part that takes your breath away. It's the part when you can't believe the person standing in front of you both exists and happened to wander into your path. It's supposed to make you feel lucky to be alive, exactly when and where you are."
Tears clouded my vision. I did feel that with Gus, but I'd felt it once before.
"You're wrong that you never saw that with me," I said, and Shadi cocked her head thoughtfully. "That's how I felt when I found you."
A smile broke across her face, and she tossed one of the couch cushions at me. "I love you, Janie," she told me.
"I love you more."
After a moment, her smile faded and she gave one frank shake of her head. "I'm sure he loves you too," she said. "I can feel it."
"You haven't even seen us together," I pointed out. "You haven't even really met him."
"I can feel it." She waved a hand toward the wall just as another thunderous rumble shook the house, lightning slashing across the windows. "Wafting off his house. Also, I'm psychic."
"So there's that," I said.
"Right," Shadi said. "So there's that."…
…I closed my eyes against the dusky sky and swallowed my laughter down. I didn't know why I couldn't stop, but soon the feeling hardened in my belly and I realized I wasn't laughing. I was crying. I felt both defeated and understood.
Angry that these characters had deserved better than they'd gotten and somehow comforted by their experience. Yes, I thought. That is how life feels too often. Like you're doing everything you can to survive only to be sabotaged by something beyond your control, maybe even some darker part of yourself.
Sometimes, it was your body. Your cells turning into poison and fighting against you. Or chronic pain sprouting up your neck and wrapping around the outsides of your scalp until it felt like fingernails sinking into your brain.
Sometimes, it was lust or heartbreak or loneliness or fear driving you off the road toward something you'd spent months or years avoiding. Actively fighting agains.
At least the last thing they'd seen, the meteor streaming toward Earth, had distracted them because of its beauty. They hadn't been afraid. They'd been mesmerized. Maybe that was all you could hope for in life.
I didn't know how long I'd been lying there, tears trickling quietly down my cheeks, but I felt a rough thumb catch one and opened my eyes to Gus's gentle face. The sky had darkened to a brutal blue. Seeing that color on someone's skin would make your stomach turn. It was gorgeous in this context. Strange how things could be repellent in some situations and incredible in others.
"Hey," he said tenderly. "What's wrong?"
I sat up and wiped my face dry. "So much for your happy ending," I said.
Gus's brow furrowed. "It was a happy ending."
"For who?"
"For them," he said. "They were happy. They had no regrets. They'd won. And they didn't even have to see it coming. For all we know, they live in that moment forever, happy like that. Together and free."
Chills crawled down my arms. I knew what he meant. I'd always felt grateful Dad had gone in his sleep. I hoped the night before, he and Mom had watched something on TV that made him laugh so hard he had to take off his glasses and get the tears out of his eyes. Maybe something with a boat in it. I hoped he'd had a few too many of Mom's infamous martinis to feel any worry when he crawled into bed, apart from that he might not feel so hot in the morning.
I had told Mom this when I'd gone home to visit at Christmas. She had cried and held me close. "It was something like that," she promised. "So much of our lives were something like that." Talking about him came in fits and starts. I learned not to press it. She learned to let it out, bit by bit, and that sometimes, it was okay to let a little ugliness into your story. That it would never rob you of all the beauty.
"It's a happy ending," Gus said again, bringing me back…
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