“It was September before he finally kissed her and another seventeen days of sweaty, relentless osculating practice before he’d made love to her. To him it was a game; to her it was torture, but the payoff had been the best night of her life.”
-Killing Pete
“She leaned into the shadow of his voice, that faint, indefinable whisper of him that took over when words failed, and held there until there was nothing left but the dark silence of him breathing.”
-Killing Pete
“It was cold when she left Boston, though the temperature, which had dipped into single digits, had little to do with it. He begged her not to leave, but how could she stay; she and forever had not come to terms. They had debated it through the night, between persistent kisses and fits of sleep, but to no avail. There would be no run-away wedding or quixotic honeymoon or heirloom bassinet; no ski chateaus or temperate vacations or rainy Sundays in bed. She would go back to her life; he would get on with his.”
-Killing Pete
“Whenever she imagined him like that, the missing crept up like fog off the water. It made her arms heavy and her mouth dry. It sucked her outside her body. The missing made her a ghost, too.”
-Killing Pete
“The Ouija Board was a rite of passage with local girls. Everyone had one and they all used them for the same purpose—to triangulate crushes, determine who was going to love whom for forever, and occasionally, for wisdom regarding whose relationship should be blown broadside asunder. More often than not, the predictions came true, but whether that was the spirit world intervening or simply the iron will of young southern females was a question for the times.”
-Killing Pete
“She’d read enough books to know that resolution was sometimes a messy thing, but required, nonetheless. Doors had to close, tears had to fall, and hearts had to break before any story deserved its bent pages and pencil-smudged margins or earned its creased binding and position on the good shelf. The depth of the pain she felt when she kissed him for the last time was more than enough to make him a classic.”
-Killing Pete
“Love is water. No matter how hard you try to hold on, it just slips through your fingers.”
-Killing Pete
“The difference in horses and boys,” she said, “is that horses don’t talk. It deems them superior.”
-Killing Pete
“She craved the rush of the hot night air over her skin, those milliseconds of heaven, of real, the swift coolness against the damp curls stuck to her neck and the spark that started in her heels and burned up her leg bones and spine like a fuse firing the quick dizzy mix of gravity and shock that rocked her senses. She thought that falling must be the joy a soul feels when its body finally sinks away.”
They were shoulder-deep, her naked body wrapped closely around his, soft sweet pillow-talk echoing off the black water. She always made him swim with her after they made love. There was something she desperately needed from the weightlessness of him holding her or their bodies disappearing together or the calm she drew from the rippling slosh and babble. That time in the river with him put her back together. And washed every trace of him clean away.
-Killing Pete
