CHARACTERS I LOVE — Tim Riggins
“If I ever so much as see you look at this kid the wrong way, I’m gonna find you, and I’m gonna punch a hole in your chest and rip your heart out.”
The Beginning or the End?
“His express train was pulling up just as we got to the platform. It was a familiar scenario: We’d walk two blocks together and then go our separate ways, sometimes muttering half-hearted intentions to call if we went out (him) and always trying to control googly eyes and hopes that the other would follow through (me). The whole time we’d known each other was one extended buildup to some climax that was never going to happen now – months of head games and blue balls. As he waited for the doors to open, he looked at me, and told me as he had so many times before that he would let me know if he went to a show we’d talked about that night. But this time, for the first time that I could remember, I knew he was earnest, like he regretted that he couldn’t do anything more than tell me he might be there, like he wanted to be able to tell me with no question that he’d see me that night, but he didn’t want to make a promise he couldn’t keep. He gazed at me with unnerving sincerity, the kind of sincerity that I’d been craving from him since we met. It was that moment, that look, that finally caused me to realize my heart had been breaking for the past five minutes.”
(Just wrote 2000 words for (one of) my novel(s) - call it a burst of real life inspiration that I really wish I didn’t have.)
