Sarah Sajadi

“A good bookstore,” Charlie says, “is like an airport where you don’t have to take your shoes off.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Nora Stephens,” he says, “I’ve racked my brain and this is the best I can come up with, so I really hope you like it.”
His gaze lifts, everything about it, about his face, about his posture, about him made up of sharp edges and jagged bits and shadows, all of it familiar, all of it perfect. Not for someone else, maybe, but for me.
“I move back to New York,” he says. “I get another editing job, or maybe take up agenting, or try writing again. You work your way up at Loggia, and we’re both busy all the time, and down in Sunshine Falls, Libby runs the local business she saved, and my parents spoil your nieces like the grandkids they so desperately want, and Brendan probably doesn’t get much better at fishing, but he gets to relax and even take paid vacations with your sister and their kids. And you and I—we go out to dinner.
“Wherever you want, whenever you want. We have a lot of fun being city people, and we’re happy. You let me love you as much as I know I can, for as long as I know I can, and you have it fucking all. That’s it. That’s the best I could come up with, and I really fucking hope you say—”
I kiss him then, like there isn’t someone reading one of the Bridgerton novels five feet away, like we’ve just found each other on a deserted island after months apart. My hands in his hair, my tongue catching on his teeth, his palms sliding around behind me and squeezing me to him in the most thoroughly public groping we’ve managed yet.
“I love you, Nora,” he says when we pull apart a few inches to breathe. “I think I love everything about you.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Charlie threads his fingers through mine and lifts the back of my hand to his lips. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I doubt I will ever like anyone else in the world as much as I like you.”

I slip my arms around his neck and climb into his lap, kissing his temples, his jaw, his mouth. Love, I think, a tremor in my hands as they move into his hair, as he kisses me.

The last-page ache.

The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside.

When he walks me to the door sometime later, he takes my face in his hands and says, “You, Nora Stephens, will always be okay.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six