iulia

“She looked so much like an angel, sometimes I wanted to run a hand over her bare back just to make sure she didn’t have wings.”
― L.J. Shen, Playing with Fire

“But I wouldn’t be alive. Not really. I would be wasting oxygen, space, and resources, going back to not-so-secretly wishing I’d die. The realization dawned on me like a cold shower. I didn’t want to die when I was with Grace. I wanted to live. To laugh. To love. To date her and nibble on her neck and listen to her talking about plays and nineties movies and defending fanny packs vehemently. I’d been relishing life—actively enjoying it, even—for months, and I didn’t even realize it. I didn’t want to die anymore. Somewhere along the road, the idea of veering my bike off the road when I picked up speed stopped appealing to me. I no longer imagined what it would feel like to hurl myself off a cliff. I stopped walking into the ring wanting the asshole in front of me to throw a punch that would send me into cardiac arrest. And it was all because of Grace ‘Texas’ Shaw.”
― L.J. Shen, Playing with Fire

“Because at the end of the day, we are all just phoenixes, rising from our own ashes, taking flight to an unknown destination, our wingtips forged by flames.”
― L.J. Shen, Playing with Fire

“As I watched him there, I didn’t see the most popular guy in college. The sex god. The illegal fighter. I saw the loneliest boy I’d ever laid eyes on. Sweet, confused, and lost. And I thought, bitterly, he didn’t even know that across the parking lot sat a girl just like him.”
― L.J. Shen, Playing with Fire