Dana Schwartz

It was as if the other’s lips were the only place they’d ever belonged, and fate itself had brought them to this very moment, terrified and aching in a half-dug grave, just so the two of them could come together.

THE AFFECTION JACK ONCE FELT FOR Isabella had seemed so real, so immediate and important. And yet the next evening, as he walked down toward the stream where he had seen Hazel sitting by the shore, he realized something: his love for Isabella had been like seeing a candle in a painting, a painting by a master who captures its light and the glow it casts on everything around it, but still a flame made of oil on canvas. When Jack looked at Hazel, the flame was alive and licking at the air around it.

That’s the funny thing: I used to think that I knew everything, that I could do anything. And then you see it firsthand, and you realize how thin the line is between everything being all right and everything being ruined forever and you just become suddenly aware that you know nothing.

“Hazel,” he said softly. “You are the most brilliant person I’ve ever met in my life. You’re incredible.”

“I’m scared,” Hazel said.

“Good,” Jack said. “That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with being scared.”

“Hazel Sinnett, you are the most miraculous creature I have ever come across, and I am going to be thinking about how beautiful you are until the day I die.”

Beecham was going on about, but you’re the one treating me, not him, and for what it’s worth, I trust you, Dr. Sinnett.

He was a fool. No, worse than a fool. He was a romantic fool.

Honestly, the nerve of him, barging in without warning, acting like I committed some sin for not wanting to promenade with him. What is a ‘promenade,’ anyway? Just walking slower than any natural human gait so you can show off a new outfit to people distracted by how badly they want to show off their new outfits. It’s a pointless exercise in self-absorption that doesn’t even work because everyone involved is too self-absorbed to provide the admiration their fellows are in such desperate need of. And as if Bernard would need to be circling around the Gardens like a show
pony to get people to notice his clothes; I swear, one could see that blue jacket from Glasgow. Ooof, just got it there.”

“Harsh? He’s a man, isn’t he? He has the entire world at his feet. I think he can handle my turning down a promenade.”

“He is your betrothed, though,” her maid said to the floor.

“Not yet. Much as my mother wishes it were the case so she could get rid of me once and for all.”

Iona swallowed and twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “Perhaps, then, you should be sweeter to him, to ensure—”

“Oh, Iona, please. I will have my entire life to be sweet to him if he wants it. Can’t I have a single afternoon of mourning my future?”

“Dead bodies are never going to bite you. They’re never going to do anything to you. It’s living things that hurt you.”