COMBACK LOVE - PETER GOLDEN

Comeback Love - Pg 275

   "Will you—will you ever forgive me?"
   I shifted my eyes to the road. "Yes."
   "When?"
   "I already forgave you."
   "Then what is it?"
   "I just haven't forgotten how much it hurts to lose you."

Comeback Love - Pg 256

   I pressed myself against the dips and swells of her body, determined to take whatever air Glenna would relinquish into my constricted lungs, and I kissed her, deeply, greedily, and she kissed me in return, generous Glenna, sharing her cognac-sweetened breath with me.
   Yet, for an instant, I wasn't sure if I was kissing Glenna or a recent acquaintance from an airport bar. It was strange and exciting and painfully disappointing, because I desperately wanted it to be Glenna, and I drew back from her and opened my eyes.

Comeback Love - Pg 230

   I don't know precisely what I'd been searching for since returning to the World, but when I glanced in the mirror, my face had the tense expression of someone who was growing weary of the search.

Comeback Love - Pg 217

   "She examines me, and I'm starring in the usual med-student horror show, convinced that I'm about to be diagnosed with Hodgkin's, leukemia, or cancer—either osteosarcoma or multiple myelome—I know I've got one of them. Then the doc says I'm fine, and I burst into tears. She pats my hand, and I ask her when the aching will stop. She says, 'Why, dear girl, you'll have to wait till you fall in love again.'"

Comeback Love - Pg 208

   "I want to talk to you," she said, a sentence that has probably, in various languages, preceded most every heartbreak since the Stone Age. "I did some thinking in Florida."
   "That's a lousy idea," I replied, telling myself that if I cracked wise for another hour and fifty minutes, 1969 would be 1970, and a whole new decade might furnish her with a rationale to reconsider.

Comeback Love - Pg 178

   "Well, she's sick in love with you. That's why she's such a pain in the ass."
   I felt vaguely unfaithful talking to Robin about Glenna, and yet it was comforting. "Explain."
   "Say you have everything. You're smart, gorgeous, guys chase you. Then you fall in love—not the puppified variety. Now you have a lot to lose that you're not in charge of, and so it stops feeling like you have everything."

Comeback Love - Pg 166

   She was moving as though the rhythm of the music had somehow gotten inside her and was now trying to get out, shifting her side to side, as if she were being buffeted by waves of summer air... Her eyes were shut and aimed toward the rays of light filtering through the leaves or the trees, and a small smile was on her face, a strange smile, as much sadness in it as happiness, and as her hips rotated under the peach cotton in perfect time to the bittersweet melody, I felt frightened and jealous, as if Glenna had betrayed me by making love to the sun and sky—by dancing alone, encased in the music, on that grassy, sunstruck patch of Washington Square, happy all by herself.

Comeback Love - Pg 126

   The streetlamps always seemed to be on, and the smoky-blue darkness was always descending as softly as the snow, through which Glenna and I lightly stepped, with a delicious symmetry to our wills and our wishes that would not survive the spring.

Comeback Love - Pg 109

   I told Glenna that I loved her, and she said, "I love you, too, Gordo. So much."
   I pressed myself against her warm, milky skin and couldn't believe my good fortune. Yet it would be some time before I understood that this was precisely the problem, the beginning of our end, that Glenna loved me.
   So much.

Comeback Love - Pg 106

   She pummeled my shoulders with her fists, releasing the hurt she'd brought back from Riverdale, another hurt heaped onto the years of hurt, screaming, "Fuck you, you fucking bastard!" and me straying through that turbulent darkness, lost now, disappearing into the terrifying uncertainty of where I began and Glenna ended, and no longer caring about the distinction, just surrendering myself to the ecstatic rhythm of her rage.

Comeback Love - Pg 82

   Glenna was calling my name, summoning me to a place I was fast approaching, and neither of us lasted too long, not on this dazzling afternoon, in the drowsy, pine-scented air, with a golden light shining through the trees, and a breeze whispering over us, and I heard myself call back to her, and there was a long, sweet pause—perfect stillness—and when it was over, Glenna and I were wrapped up together, gasping, holding on, each of us inside the other.

Comeback Love - Pg 75

   At last, she spotted me, then smiled with an uninhibited joy she hadn't shown me before, and for the briefest of moments I was certain that she loved me. Later, I'd be haunted by the possibility that I'd fallen in love with Glenna alone, fallen in love with the reflection of my own appetite to be loved... but not at that moment.

Comeback Love - Pg 74

   Glenna said, "I feel like there's not enough room in my life for me. Like I want more space and can't get it."
   "Can't get it? Why?"
   "Because then I'll lose you."

Comeback Love - Pg 74

   She gave up and stared out the windshield, focusing on that place I imagined she saw in her sleep, her own badlands, all dust and sorrow.

Comeback Love - Pg 73

   She was entwining her body with mine, huddling into me as if seeking shelter, whispering, "I don't want to lose you."
   I was stunned that Glenna was scared of losing me, for I had thought it was the other way around, and though I was too clouded with sleep to answer, I held her tighter, drawing her close enough so that in my mind we became a single sculpture of flesh and bone, impossible to separate.

Comeback Love - Pg 54

   Her breathy murmuring thrilled me, a wondrously intimate sound, and I lost myself in the cadence of her breath, and soon the room was scented with the bouquet of our bodies, and our breathing was a persistent song, becoming part of the music on the stereo as the album played again and again.

Comeback Love - Pg 53

   I knew that I should get on with it, but I didn't want this moment to end, didn't want to turn it into a different moment, maybe better, but not this exact moment, with its boundless promise, its serenity, its grace.

Comeback Love - Pg 43

   I'm sure that she said some other things, but I can't recall, because by the time I'd parked on Bleecker, and we were walking to Little Italy, Glenna had stuffed my heart in the lusciously curved back pocket of her bell-bottoms.

Comeback Love - Pg 32

   I was afraid she'd say no, and not only because she was good looking enough to frighten just about any guy. It was that talking about the future with her had made me feel as though I'd actually have one, and if she said no, then what would I have?