The Goldfinch

Just them making plans for their future together in vain... </3

THE GOLDFINCH, Donna Tartt

« Fate brings us together again. »

"Theo." His hug was strong and parental, and so fierce that it made me cry a little harder. Then his hand was on my shoulder, heavy anchoring hand that was security and authority itself; he was leading me in, into the workshop, dim gilt and rich wood smells I'd dreamed of, up the stairs into the long-lost parlor, with its velvets and urns and bronzes. »

« The first time he'd turned in bed and draped an arm over my waist, I lay there half- asleep for a moment, not knowing what to do: staring at my old socks on the floor, empty beer bottles, my paperbacked copy of The Red Badge of Courage.

At last - embarrassed - faked a yawn and tried to roll away, but instead he sighed and pulled me closer, with a sleepy, snuggling motion. Ssh, Potter, he whispered, into the back of my neck. Is only me. It was weird. Was it weird? It was; and it wasn't.

I'd fallen back to sleep shortly after, lulled by his bitter, beery unwashed smell and his breath easy in my ear. I was aware I couldn't explain it without making it sound like more than it was.

On nights when I woke strangled with fear there he was, catching me when I started up terrified from the bed, pulling me back down in the covers beside him, muttering in nonsense Polish, his voice throaty and strange with sleep.

We'd drowse off in each other's arms, listening to music from my iPod (Thelonious Monk, the Velvet Underground, music my mother had liked) and sometimes wake clutching each other like castaways or much younger children. »

« But we were so attuned to each other that we didn’t need to talk at all if we didn’t want to; we knew how to tip each other over in hysterics with an arch of the eyebrow or quirk of the mouth. »

THE GOLDFINCH, CHAPTER SIX

« Again Boris moaned, as the guy yanked his hair once more, and from across the car threw me an unmistakeable look-which I understood just as plainly as if he'd spoken the words aloud, an urgent and very specific cut of the eyes straight from our shoplifting days: run for it, Potter, go. "Boris," I said, after a disbelieving pause, "please, just give it to them," »

« Happily, Boris never seemed annoyed or even very startled when I woke him, as if he came from a world where there was nothing so unusual in a nocturnal howl of pain. Sometimes he'd gather up Popchik-snoring at the foot of our bed-and deposit him in a limp sleepy heap on my chest. And weighed down like that the warmth of both of them around me-I lay counting to myself in Spanish or trying to remember all the words I knew in Russian (swear words, mostly) until I went back to sleep. »

«She was the golden thread running through everything, a lens that magnified beauty so that the whole world stood transfigured in relation to her, and her alone.»

« We looked at each other. And it occurred to me that despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I’d liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I’d met him was that he was never afraid. »