Ali > Recent Status Updates

“I told you that I would kill for you, Ira. That wasn’t an exaggeration. I will always choose you.”


“Your selflessness is beautiful, dear, but I need you to put yourself first. Just this once.”

“I love you more than you’ll ever really understand. And I’ve come to accept that my difficulty in articulating these emotions might not be the fault of my TBI, but is instead because this love is ineffable. For me, you transcend words—you exist in a place of nature and emotion.”

“You’re a field of sunflowers and the iridescence on a soap bubble. You’re sunlight refracting on water and fog settled deep in a valley.”

“We didn’t dare let go of what remained of those we so dearly loved, despite the certainty that this guilt was going to drown us, because this was all that remained. “To release ourselves of guilt would be to forget.
And remembrance was the greatest act of love there was.”

“Because yes, this world, with its seven billion people, really wasn’t perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble.
But Ira Doyle was.
And Ira Doyle was Larkin’s world.”


“A sphere has no ends,” Larkin explained. “When someone says they’ll follow you to the ends of the Earth, that means they have every intention of being at your side forever.”

“Larkin took Doyle’s face in one hand. “Thank you for following me.”
“To the ends of the Earth.”
“Earth is spherical.”
“Yeah, it is.”

“ “I think, when we die, we’ll be guilty of instilling a sadness in others that never goes away. But I also think, that if we’re so lucky, those same people will remember us. And if we’re remembered, Ms. Ramos, we’re never truly gone.”

“And like the floor was dropping out from underfoot again, like Larkin was weightless again, the remorse that’d been infecting the small undergrowth of beauty in his soul for eighteen years glimpsed the sunshine born from Doyle’s smile, and Larkin felt… free.
“I love you,” Larkin said again. “I should have told you last night. I should have told you every night.”

😭😭

“My facial grammar might be limited,” Larkin said, “my voice might be monotone, and my words might not be very romantic… but your touch is summer mornings and cool sheets and gooseflesh and the ticking of my wristwatch and—and peace.”

“I think you might have given him a complex.”
“Good. Unsubstantiated male egotism is a plague on our society.”

I absolutely love Larkin 🤣

“Trauma is not stupid,” Larkin interrupted. “Don’t let anyone convince you that you’re supposed to be over it simply because an arbitrary number of years have passed.”

“I want you comfortable with me,” Doyle whispered, leaning down to speak beside Larkin’s ear. “If you’re overwhelmed, you don’t owe me an explanation. And if you forget something, I promise it was trivial, because a man whose love language is remembrance never forgets what matters most about me.” Doyle left the room without another word.”

they’re so sweet I can’t

“You don’t have to say anything. I think I’m unaccustomed to being a priority, is all. I’ve never had a partner offer their shirt sleeve in place of an unavailable tissue.”

Stoppp ittt

“It was like a bubble had formed around them just then, encapsulating them in an untouchable privacy lasting only a heartbeat, a breath, long enough for Doyle to say in his quiet, smoky voice, “I’ll do anything for you.”
The words hit Larkin square in the chest and repeated over and over like an echo trapped in a cave.”

😭😭

“I’m quite practiced at defending myself,” Larkin remarked.
“Yeah, but we’re partners,” Doyle said. “That means you don’t go at it alone.”

Ira is such perfection really