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Thirst for Salt

Book by Madelaine Lucas · 29 quotes · Love, Relationships, Age Difference

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Thirst for Salt Quotes

“Much better were the quiet afternoons in the dim light ... my legs hanging from the end of the bed while he kneeled before my body as if in supplication. I was a greedy lover, he teased, and I was, I was, this desire, this pleasure, unknown and new. Light streamed into my bedroom early in the autumn through the thin lace curtains. The morning after Jude spent the night at my house for the first time, I turned to look at him beside me. He looked old. Not older, old.”

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“What matters now is this, he said. He pulled me close, kissed the top of my head. Here, with you. I was so eager to be loved by him, to be held in his arms and reassured, to shut out the ghosts of other girlfriends from the room like a cold draft, I said nothing more. Climbing on top of him, my hand on his chest, an animal warmth. I bent to kiss him and let the damp ropes of my hair drag across his face, his chest. He reached up and moved his hands through it, as if it were light or water. I can see it all over your face, he said. Such naked wanting. I told him that I'd always been afraid of wanting anything so badly that it becomes visible.”

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“But as we learn to trust, we take more risks. He touched me with what I can only think to describe as authority--so different from my sexual experiences so far, those incoherent collegiate rumblings. Jude turned to me, rolling onto his side. He brushed the sand from my cheek and said, Sleep with me tonight. I thought I just did. I don't mean fucking, he said, and I marveled at the word in his mouth--not a curse or a blunt force but somehow spoken with lightness, worn in with the warmth of many years. I mean come home with me. Spend the night. I want to be able to reach for you.”

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“In his absence, I imagined the house had revealed something about Jude's true nature--private, and unyielding in all the places I'd thought he was inviting me in. You're quiet tonight, my mother said. With the wine in my blood, I could have told her about it t hen. Bold enough and wanting, suddenly, a witness. But what words would I use to describe to my mother what we did together? Did not have the language for it. Could not look her in the eye and call it love.”

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“You're just different from the other boys I've brought home. Different in what way? Well, you're not exactly a boy. I'm old, you mean? No, not old. But you're, you know, a man. I hate that there've been others, said Jude, and I was so surprised at the fact of his jealousy that I apologized. Why would he be jealous, I thought, when I had never loved or been loved this way before? It wasn't like this, I said. It wasn't ever like this. Tell me that you've never had anyone else. I want you to pretend. Okay, I said, laughing. I've never been with anyone else. Happy? Tell me I'm your first, he said, his voice low and his hands moving across my blouse. Tell me that you've never been touched. I'm untouched. Chaste, a clean slate. But you want it.”

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“We are taught that love is not so different from hatred, that instead of opposites, the two extremes of the human heart might in fact be twins. But it's grief, really, that is love's twin, that knows no bounds of time or space. Wave after wave it keeps coming, whereas hatred cools, fades. So many times I swore that I loved Jude, that no one had ever loved or been loved this way before, and then something broke through, a new depth. Colder and darker moved the waters of my love. Thinking, in those first few days after, of something [my mother] once sad: There is no end to grief, because there is no end to love.”

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“But that night, listening to the swell music, Patsy Cline's voice strained with sorrow, I thought. She's got these little things, I've got you. Wrapping my arts around Jude's waist. In that moment, I felt so lucky I thought I might die. The only way I can understand this now is that what I was feeling, standing in his kitchen all those years ago, was a presentiment of loss.”

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