Monstar

So if you really ask for the cause, everything that happened to us.

All the time people ask for the things that are difficult for us, as if it's nothing.

If you keep running away, it'll become a habit.

Being lonely means you need someone. Being solitude means you don't need anyone.

That Summer

"Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.

The Type

If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,
you can let them look at you. But do not mistake eyes for hands.

Or windows.
Or mirrors.

Let them see what a woman looks like.
They may not have ever seen one before.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,
you can let them touch you.

Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for.
Sometimes it is a bottle. A door. A sandwich. A Pulitzer. Another woman.

But their hands found you first. Do not mistake yourself for a guardian.
Or a muse. Or a promise. Or a victim. Or a snack.

You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat.
You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,
you can let them hold you.

All day they practice keeping their bodies upright--
even after all this evolving, it still feels unnatural, still strains the muscles,

holds firm the arms and spine. Only some men will want to learn
what it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you,

admit they do not have the answers
they thought they would have by now;

some men will want to hold you like The Answer.
You are not The Answer.

You are not the problem. You are not the poem
or the punchline or the riddle or the joke.

Woman. If you grow up the type men want to love,
You can let them love you.

Being loved is not the same thing as loving.
When you fall in love, it is discovering the ocean

after years of puddle jumping. It is realizing you have hands.
It is reaching for the tightrope when the crowds have all gone home.

Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman
men will hurt. If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along.

It is hard to stop loving the ocean. Even after it has left you gasping, salty.
Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made, the ones you still call

mistakes when you tuck them in at night. And know this:
Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours.

Let the statues crumble.
You have always been the place.

You are a woman who can build it yourself.
You were born to build.

A Lady By Midnight

"I never thought Greek philosophy could make a damn bit of sense to me. And most of it didn't, but those words just seemed right. 'Love is composed of a single soul, inhabiting two bodies.'" He took her by the shoulders drawing her close. "It rang true for me, in a way nothing else did. Whatever soul I had, Katie, I think I placed it in your keeping twenty years ago. And now, it's as if...every time we kiss, you give a little piece of it back."

Kate realized she had a grave problem. She was infatuated. Or mildly insane. Possibly both.

"You're like a gift," he said, his voice rough. "All wrapped up for someone else. A man can't look at you, but think of loosing those bows, one by one."

"I don't want anyone fighting over me," Kate said. "It's not worth it."
"Like hell it's not." Samuel turned to her. "Don't ever say you're not worth it, Katie. You're worth epic battles. Entire wars."
Her heart pinched. "Samuel..."
"Yes, Helen of Troy?" She thought she saw him wink as he backed away, reaching for a sword to match Evan's.

After all this time...he would choose this moment to be charming.

The Pact

No matter who you are, there is always some part of you that wishes you were someone else, and when, for a millisecond, you get that wish, it's a miracle.

To Sir Phillip, With Love

It was nearly impossible to keep anything a secret, especially from her sisters, the youngest of whom, Hyacinth could probably have won the war against Napoleon in half
the time if His Majesty had only thought to draft her into the espionage service.

This was killing her. She had to break the silence. This was not natural. It was too awful. People were meant to talk.

If one didn't have love, was it better, then, to be alone?

Phillip looked to Eloise. "Perhaps introductions are in order?"
"Oh," Eloise said, gulping. "Yes, of course. These are my brothers."
"I'd gathered," he said, his voice as dry as dust.
She shot him an apologetic look, which, Phillip thought, was really the least she could do after nearly getting him tortured and killed, then turned to her brothers and motioned to each in turn, saying, "Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Gregory. These three," she added, motioning to A, B, and C, "are my elders. This one"she waved dismissively at Gregory, is an infant."

"I had to do something," she said. "I couldn't just sit and wait for life to happen to me any longer. I never thought I would be left behind."
He chuckled. "Eloise Bridgerton, I don't think anyone wouldever make the mistake of leaving you behind."

A lot could happen in a week.
Just look at the last one.

"Shall we return to the dining room?" Anthony queried. "I imagine you're hungry, and if we tarry much longer, Colin is sure to have eaten our host out of house and home."
Eloise nodded. "Either that, or they've all killed him by now."
Anthony paused to consider that. "It would save me the expense of a wedding."
"Anthony!"
"It's a joke, Eloise," he said, giving his head a weary shake. "Come along, now. Let's make sure your Sir Phillip still resides among the ranks of the living."

Phillip muttered something under his breath.
"What did you say?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"You said something."
He gave her an impatient look. "If I'd meant for you to hear it, I would have said it out loud."
She sucked in her breath. "Then you shouldn't have said it at all."
"Some things," Phillip muttered, "are impossible to keep inside."
"What did you say?" she demanded.
Phillip raked his hand through his hair. "Eloise"
"Did you insult me?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Since it appears we are to be wed," she bit off, "yes."
"I don't recall my exact words," Phillip shot back, "but I believe I may have uttered the words women and lack of sense in the same breath."

"Are you certain you'll be happy?" she asked.
Eloise smiled ruefully. "It's a little late to wonder, don't you think?"
"It might be too late to do anything about it, but it's never too late to wonder. You're very impatient," Violet said, facing the door. "You always have been."
"I know," Eloise said, wondering if this was a scolding, and if so,why was her mother choosing to do it now?
"I always loved that about you," Violet said. "I always loved everything about you, of course, but for some reason I always found your impatience especially charming. It was never because you wanted more, it was because you wanted everything."
Eloise wasn't so sure that sounded like such a good trait.
"You wanted everything for everyone, and you wanted to know it all and learn it all, and ..."
For a moment Eloise thought her mother might be done, but then Violet turned around and added, "You've never been satisfied with second-best, and that's good, Eloise. I'm glad you never married any of those men who proposed in London. None of them would have made you happy. Content, maybe, but not happy."
Eloise felt her eyes widen with surprise.
"But don't let your impatience become all that you are," Violet said softly. "Because it isn't, you know. There's a great deal more to you, but I think sometimes you forget that." She smiled, the gentle, wise smile of a mother saying goodbye to her daughter.

He shook his head in wonder. "You are magnificent."
"I keep telling everyone that," she said with a nonchalant shrug, "but you seem to be the only one to believe me."

...I do not tell you often enough, dear Mother, how very grateful I am that I am yours. It is a rare parent who would offer a child such latitude and understanding. It is an even rarer one who calls a daughter friend. I do love you, dear Mama.

There is so much I hope to teach you, little one. I hope that I may do so by example, but I feel the need to put the words to paper as well. It is a quirk of mine, one which I expect you will recognize and find amusing by the time you read this letter.
Be strong.
Be diligent.
Be conscientious. There is never anything to be gained by taking the easy road. (Unless, of course, the road is an easy one to begin with. Roads sometimes are. If that should be the case, do not forge a new, more difficult one. Only martyrs go out looking for trouble.)
Love your siblings. You have two already, and God willing, there will be more. Love them well, for they are your blood, and when you are unsure, or times are difficult, they will be the ones to stand by your side.
Laugh. Laugh out loud, and laugh often. And when circumstances call for silence, turn your laugh into a smile.
Don't settle. Know what you want and reach for it. And if you don't know what you want, be patient. The answers will come to you in time, and you may find that your heart s desire has been right under your nose all the while.
And remember, always remember that you have a mother and a father who love each other and love you.
I feel you growing restless. Your father is making strange gasping sounds and will surely lose his temper altogether if I do not move from my escritoire to my bed.
Welcome to the world, little one. We are all so delighted to make your acquaintance.

She was married now, and suddenly she understood what it was her mother had been trying so hard to tell her on her wedding night. Marriage was about compromise, and she and Phillip were very different people. They might be perfect for one another, but that didn't mean they were the same. And if she wanted him to change some of his ways for her, well then, she was going to have to do the same for him.

I Kissed An Earl

They immediately spent a moment in bemused silence in honor of the perilous little paradox that was the English female.

When and if Violet ever fell in love, lightning would split the heavens, tectonic plates would shift, continents would reorder themselves.
Because she might be willful and spoiled and impetuous, but no one loved with the force of his sister. Her love story would be epic.

How, she had no idea. She seldom considered the how of things.

"Furthermore"
"There's a 'furthermore'?" His voice was utterly inflectionless.
"I'm not a child. I'm a lady born of one of England's finest and oldest families, and I daresay even you know how to behave in the presence of a lady. Regardless of the inconvenience I've caused you, I'll thank you to remember whatever manners you've managed to feign to date, because the ones you're exhibiting do you no credit and merely reinforce the prevailing opinion, Captain Flint, that you are a savage." She delighted in giving the S a serpent-like sibilance.

"The measure of a gentleman is how he behaves when he hasn't an audience to witness the beauty of his manners. And I wouldn't expect you to understand this, my lord, but centuries of fine breeding have ensured that I need not, as you say, exert myself if I choose not to. Only the likes of you equate the actual need to work with virtue. It is in fact due to the work of my ancestors that I no longer need to, and my family considers this a mark of honor."

"I should not, if I were you, wish to be, because 'sterner stuff' is usually forged by hardship.

"Don't be tedious, Lavay. If it's so necessary for you to know," he said ungraciously. "She won a contest."
There was a short stunned silence.
"You played a game?" Lavay said this slow, flat incredulity, hilarity suppressed, clearly trying to picture it. "And you lost to a girl. What manner of contest was this? Ribbon-tying?"
Flint felt ridiculous now, in retrospect, which was doing nothing to settle his temper. "I challenged her to aim a dart. Let's just say it landed rather serendipitously in the right spot," he finished curtly. "She was lucky."
"You speak metaphorically, Captain? She aimed a dart as in the vein of Cupid?

"It's-" She couldn't finish.
"Don't try, Miss Redmond," he agreed, shading his eyes. "There are honestly no suitable words, so we shall not fault you for failing to find them. Nothing makes a man feel more like God than sailing a ship over the sea with no land in sight. And nothing makes a man feel less like a God than clinging to a shred of ship exploded by lightning in a storm."

Well, it's not as though he cannot help it, you see. The saving of things. I suspect it's Captain Flint's way of telling the world, "This is how it's done."
She wondered if it was also Flint's way of showing the world, This is how you could have saved me when I was a boy.

"But is not one a result of the other? she asked. "Love and loyalty? I cannot see how could you prefer one to the other."

"Very well," she said after a moment. "Here is how I see that loyalty and love are the same: You would lay down your life for someone for reasons of both love and loyalty. But loyalty implies dependence, doesn't it? For instance, dogs are loyal. It also implies indebtedness. For instance, servants are loyal."
"It also implies integrity. And honor. And"
"Steadfastness," she completed, with only a hint of irony.
"So you see them as absolutes then, Miss Redmond? Love means to be willing to die for someone, and loyalty perhaps the same?"
"How can they be otherwise?"

Lyon Redmond was either a man on a pilgrimage in search of salvation, or a man out to burn on the pyre of his own love for a woman.
Regardless, he still suffered.

"Tell me what wouldn't you do for Violet, Captain Flint?"
Flint didn't yet know the answer to this. Though he was perhaps closer to knowing.
"I haven't yet been tested."
Lyon smiled slowly at this, and shook his head. "Ah. Clearly you haven't a soul of a poet, then, sir. You cannot be lured into hyperbole: 'There's nothing I wouldn't do! Nothing!' And etcetera. I can. I like hyperbole. Don't fear it, Flint! Believe me, there's some truth to all the purple words that surround love, you know. When you love someone more than life and it is indeed possible to love someone more than life, or otherwise poets wouldn't have gone on and on about it over the centuries and you know, you know, you were born for only one person - imagine you cannot have them without tearing everything else you know asunder. Without hurting and disappointing all the other people you love. What then would you do?
"Let's say then you've made the decision to tear the life you know asunder in order to be with this person you love. A difficult decision to be sure. Putting it lightly. Because you cannot imagine a life without her, and the alternative left to you is a lifetime of desolation, as you don't intend to don a hair shirt or join a monastery or fling yourself into the ocean and drown. And so you go ahead and do the unthinkable and tear your life asunder, only to discover the person you love won't have you after all, and she actually has a reason."

"For you see, Captain Flint, I, too, never settle for less than what I want. Or never thought I possibly could. I'm a Redmond. If only you truly understood what this means. So I set out to reorder the world in a way I thought would make me worthy of her love. But my quest has changed me in ways I never anticipated, and I'm not the man who once loved that girl. There's much more to my journey yet. And here's a bitter irony: I've found in becoming heroic, in becoming worthy of her, I've painted myself into an untenable corner. I've more work to do to prove someone's innocence or guilt."

He began to stand, and saw Lyon stiffen, poised to do whatever he needed to do. He, like Lyon, could throw himself on a pyre, too. Because fire cleansed. She'd won, and he'd lost.

It had stopped mattering. Her happiness was indistinguishable from his own. No matter what became of him, he wanted her to know he loved her.

"You'd best get out of here, Redmond. Your secret is safe with me."
Lyon's eyes flared in wary surprise. He froze. And his smile, when it came, was slow, and crooked, and he looked very like Lavay when Lavay was being insufferably knowing.
"Ah. You do love her more than life. Splendid. And that, my dear Lord Flint, is what I came here today to discover."
Whatever he felt was between him and Violet. "Go before I change my mind, Redmond."

She needed to know more. "But that means-"
"It means I love you, Violet. I have never said that aloud to another human being."
He said it quickly and tonelessly. As if he was afraid of the words. Violet stood basking in those words the way she might a sunbeam after a long, gray day. She closed her eyes. And she knew she was lit from within.
"Do not let me just stand here having said those words," he said stiffly. "It's undignified."
"I love you, too," she said softly, hurriedly. Feeling abashed. Eyes still closed. Egads. So this was what it was like to be in love. Awkward and foolish, indeed.