“…… as though I didnt expect to see Amy sitting there, drinking mojitos with Kerry and a girl I didnt recognize. She’s heartbreakingly beautiful, her cheeks and shoulders freckled with California sun, her hair longer by a year and straight now. The longer hair is just one of a dozen small ways in which she’s different from how I remember – new bracelet, new green tank top, fingernails elegantly manicured rather than gnawed to the quick….. ….. Except that beneath the paper-thin layer of righteous indignation, all I really want is to spend a couple of hours in her company……
“The two of us laugh often and talk without pause, the easy, intuitive way we always shared returning instantly……”
“Then it’s just her and me. I thought this was what I wanted all along, but somehow, here under the fluorescent, there’s a sudden, powerful awkwardness between us. We stand there a minute longer. I keep willing myself to say something, or else to put my arms around her. But I’m afraid to move, convinced that everything going forward hinges on this moment, that whatever we become, or fail to become, is entirely dependent on what happens in the next few seconds. And I’m paralyzed by the fear that I’ll screw it up. Then the moment is gone. Amy puts her hand on my arm briefly, says ‘See you,’ and walks away. I have all I can do not to follow her like a puppy and beg her to take me home. She gets halfway to her truck, pauses in the middle of the parking lot, and turns back, and for a moment I let myself believe she’s changed her mind, that her love for me has won out and we’ll be reunited in a desperate, twirling Hollywood hug right here outside the pub. But instead she reaches in her purse, rips off the corner of a page in her address book, scribbles something, and presses it into my hand.”
” ‘I’m sorry, Junior,’ she says. She stares at me, searching my face. Then she grasps my wrists and says, ‘Listen, you look terrible. You know that, right? Whatever you’re doing to yourself, stop it. You shld know better. You should be smarter than this.”
“And you should know smart’s got nothing to do with it.”
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was reading the book when i came across this chapter, and i cant help but think… it just saddens me all of a sudden, just thinking of how it ended…
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