Jess’s Reviews > Release Me > Status Update

Finally, she says, "I'm afraid of buying a garbage can." Winston studies her. "Why?"
She shakes her head, turns her eyes to the darkened hall.
"I always thought I'd do stuff like that with Kenji. Buying plates or a lamp or a couch—without him?" She stills. "It feels like closing the door on what might've been. Like I'm accepting that it's never going to happen."

She's so beautiful it's actually a little hard on my brain.
The first time I saw her I glitched so hard I convinced myself she wasn't even human.
I can't process the sight of her like this, in stillness.
She looks like if a flower were a person. Like if clouds were a person. Like if a person was made of cake.

His piercing green eyes were dazzling in the glare of my distorted vision, his hair a golden nimbus around his head. His skin was luminous. All his edges had been buffed away, softened into something diaphanous and ethereal. He looked almost angelic.

"Why is it," I whisper, finally breaking the silence,
"that you don't seem to be truly alive unless you're near my brother?"

I've been watched by infinite eyes all my life, but no one has ever looked at me and made me feel safe.
No one but him.

"But then I heard you insulted him multiple times in front of an entire unit. I love you, James, but I would've shot you, too."
"Wow." I lean against the window. "Nice. You two were made for each other."