Renata Gomes

“Not everyone wants you to be someone else, Elsie. And I definitely wouldn’t want you to be George.”
“And why is that?”
“It would be a waste.”
“A waste of what?”
“Of you.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Love, Theoretically

“In my fantasies, you allow me to keep an eye on you.” I feel his lips at my temple. “And when I really let go, I imagine that you let me take care of you, too.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Love, Theoretically

“I can give you nice. I can give you better than nice. I can give you everything.” He smiles at me, full of hope. “You don’t even have to admit to yourself that you love me, Bee. God knows I love you enough for the both of us. But I need you to stay. I need you to stick around. Not in Houston, if you don’t want to. I’ll follow you, if you ask me to.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Love on the Brain

“I know what she smells like. This little freckle on her neck when she pulls up her hair. Her upper lip is a little plumper than the lower. The curve of her wrist, when she holds a pen. It’s wrong, really wrong, but I know the shape of her. I go to sleep thinking about it, and then I wake up, go to work, and she is there, and it’s impossible. I tell her stuff I know she’ll agree to, just to hear her hum back at me. It’s like hot water down my fucking spine. She’s married. She’s brilliant. She trusts me, and all I think about is taking her to my office, stripping her, doing unspeakable things to her. And I want to tell her. I want to tell her that she’s luminous, she’s so bright in my mind, sometimes I can’t focus. Sometimes I forget why I came into the room. I’m distracted. I want to push her against a wall, and I want her to push back. I want to go back in time and punch her stupid husband on the day I met him and then travel back to the future and punch him again. I want to buy her flowers, food, books. I want to hold her hand, and I want to lock her in my bedroom. She’s everything I ever wanted and I want to inject her into my veins and also to never see her again. There’s nothing like her and these feelings, they are fucking intolerable. They were half-asleep while she was gone, but now she’s here and my body thinks it’s a fucking teenager and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. There is nothing I can do, so I’ll just . . . not.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Love on the Brain