The voices / 20 fragments

Kristan Higgins

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01Undated

You asked why I couldn't forgive you," Nick said, very quietly, and I jumped a little. "It was because you were the love of my life, Harper. And you didn't want to be. That's hard to let go.

Kristan Higgins / quote

02Undated

I'll tell you something, Harpy," he said, his voice almost a whisper now. "It never even occurred to me that we wouldn't make it. And it never occurred to you that we would. You were just waiting for us to go down in flames. I thought we could get through anything.

Kristan Higgins / quote

03Undated

....And then I turned and saw a guy staring at me...."What are you looking at, idiot?" I asked, giving him the sneer that had served me so well."My future wife. The mother of my children.

Kristan Higgins / quote

04Undated

I don't get it, guys, I continued. I'd want to date me. Why is it so hard for me? I'm wicked fun, I dress nicely, I'm friendly... I'd love to date me. Wouldn't you?

Kristan Higgins / quote

05Undated

Not everyone has to be in a relationship to feel good about themselves. Some people are better off on their own.

Kristan Higgins / quote

06Undated

Forgiveness is difficult,” she said, making me feel small-hearted and brittle. “You don’t have to trust Adam again, not right away, but it does mean you have to accept what’s happened and start to take steps away from the infidelity.” So once again, the burden is on me. Planning the wedding, though it was a genuine joy, was on me. Once we figured out why we couldn’t get pregnant, the burden was on me, too, with those horrible shots that made me so hormonal I had to go into the bathroom at work and cry, and everyone knew and was so nice, which made me cry more. All Adam had to do was switch to wearing boxers and have more sex. The pregnancy—me again. I’m the one with a four-inch scar and a pooch of skin. The house decorating, painting, hiring people to overhaul the plumbing and electric… me. His mother’s birthday—also mine to remember. Holidays, vacations, weekend plans, all mine. And while I would never call my girls a burden, the huge responsibility of raising them is 99 percent mine. And now the future of our marriage is on me. I have to forgive him. I have to accept his apology. I have to get past this. That first night, I lay stiffly next to him. He gave me a meaningful basset-hound look and said, “Thank you, Rachel,” and it was all I could do not to flip him off.

Kristan Higgins / quote

07Undated

Book club meets every other month or so. Besides marriage counseling and the very occasional night out with my sister, I’m home twenty-nine nights out of thirty, and still the girls resent me. Not once have they ever complained about Adam’s late meetings—which may or may not have been booty calls for amazing porno sex. Me, I go out to my stupid book club, and I’m punished for it.

Kristan Higgins / quote

08Undated

In most marriages, lust and love become tempered by normalcy. If you hear your husband farting in the bathroom seconds before he emerges and asks if you want to fool around, you generally don’t want to fool around. You might, after a few minutes, but you have to forgive your husband for… well, for being human. For eating a bean burrito. After all, you ate the bean burrito, too.

Kristan Higgins / quote

09Undated

But they're family, and you forgive them, even if they are human equivalent of hyenas. Because that's what you do, Posey. Forgive.

Kristan Higgins / quote

10Undated

If only…the saddest words in the English language.

Kristan Higgins / quote

11Undated

I don't want to lose you, I love you, and…and that's all I've got.”As speeches went, it wasn't great. As feelings went…different story.

Kristan Higgins / quote

12Undated

She smiled, and there it was again, that aching pressure in his chest. Love, or a heart attack. Kind of the same thing.

Kristan Higgins / quote

13Undated

When an eighty-five pound mammal licks your tears away, then tries to sit on your lap, it's hard to feel sad.

Kristan Higgins / quote

14Undated

The bewilderment is the worst part. That’s what they don’t tell you in divorce articles. They talk about anger and loneliness and growing apart and starting over and being kind to yourself, but they don’t tell you about the untold hours in the black hole of why. Why? What changed? When? Why was I the one you chose to marry, but all of a sudden, I’m not enough anymore?

Kristan Higgins / quote

15Undated

I guess I've found that I'd rather be alone than with the wrong person.

Kristan Higgins / quote

16Undated

Get out of bed. Go to classes. Try to be normal, and pretty soon all that grief you carry...it gets easier.

Kristan Higgins / quote

17Undated

I had to get over [him]. For months now, a stone had been sitting on my heart. I'd shed a lot of tears over [him], lost a lot of sleep, eaten a lot of cake batter. Somehow, I had to move on. [Life] would be hell if I didn't shake loose from the grip he had on my heart. I most definitely didn't want to keep feeling this way, alone in a love affair meant for two. Even if he'd felt like The One. Even if I'd always thought we'd end up together. Even if he still had a choke chain on my heart.

Kristan Higgins / quote

18Undated

Granted, I'd waited a long time to hear those words. Would've sold a kidney-maybe two-to have heard them at one point. Now, though...they didn't have the same impact. They were, in fact, an overcooked noodle in the pasta salad of love.

Kristan Higgins / quote

19Undated

Commandment #1: Believe in yourself. Commandment #2: Get over yourself.

Kristan Higgins / quote

20Undated

You know what I loved about 'Sideways'? Well, the wine, of course. But it was one of the few movies in which being a writer was realistically depicted. I loved how the Paul Giamatti character tries so ineptly to talk about his book.

Kristan Higgins / quote