Maria

“Here,' Alex says, moving his own hips, 'watch me.'
With a grave gulp of champagne, Henry says, 'I am.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“You listen to me,” she says. Her jaw is set, ironclad. It’s the game face he’s seen her use to stare down Congress, to cow autocrats. Her grip on his hand is steady and strong. He wonders, half-hysterically, if this is how it felt to charge into war under Washington. “I am your mother. I was your mother before I was ever the president, and I’ll be your mother long after, to the day they put me in the ground and beyond this earth. You are my child. So, if you’re serious about this, I’ll back your play.”
Alex is silent.
But the debates, he thinks. But the general.
Her gaze is hard. He knows better than to say either of those things. She’ll handle it.
“So,” she says. “Do you feel forever about him?”
And there’s no room left to agonize over it, nothing left to do but say the thing he’s known all along.
“Yeah,” he says, “I do.”
Ellen Claremont exhales slowly, and she grins a small, secret grin, the crooked, unflattering one she never uses in public, the one he knows best from when he was a kid”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“How many times do I have to tell y’all not to discuss your murder plots in front of a sitting president?” their mother interrupts. “Plausible deniability. Come on.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue