Top highlights from Malibu Rising
How were you supposed to change- in ways both big and small- when your family was always there to remind you of exactly the person you apparently signed an ironclad contract to be?
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Nina understood, maybe for the first time, that letting people love you and care for you is part of how you love and care for them.
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Family is found...whether it be blood or circumstance or choice, what binds us does not matter. All that matters is that we are bound.
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Just because it is in Malibu's nature to burn, so was it in one particular person's nature to set fire and walk away.
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Our family histories are simply stories. They are myths we create about the people who came before us, in order to make sense of ourselves.
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She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.
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Must be nice. To be able to be weak. I wouldnt know.
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She was a woman, after all. Living in a world created by men. And she had long known that assholes protect their own. They are faithful to no one but surprisingly protective of each other.
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Maybe our parents' lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins. Or. Or maybe we are free the moment we are born. Maybe everything we've even done is by our own hands.
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Alcoholism is a disease with many faces, and some of them look beautiful.
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Theres no room for you in my life anymore. And I dont owe it to you to make any space.
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It was as if June had given her a boxas if every parent gives their children a boxfull of the things they carried. June had given her children this box packed to the brim with her own experiences, her own treasures and heartbreaks. Her own guilts and pleasures, triumphs and losses, values and biases, duties and sorrows. And Nina had been carrying around this box her whole life, feeling the full weight of it. But it was not, Nina saw just then, her job to carry the full box. Her job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.
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She knew it was up to her to say what had to be said. To do what had to be done. When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can't stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.
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But a good life is knowing people care about you, knowing you can take care of the people that count on you.
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There was finally enough air within her for a fire to ignite.
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Too much self-sufficiency was sort of mean to the people who loved you, Kit thought. You robbed them of how good it feels to give, of their sense of value.
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Our parents live inside us, whether they stick around or not... They express themselves through us in the way we hold a pen or shrug our shoulders, in the way we raise our eyebrow. Our heritage lingers in our blood.
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That is the thing about the water, it is not yours to control. You are at the mercy of nature. Thats what makes surfing feel like more than sport: It requires destiny to be on your side, the ocean must favor you.
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Nina didnt hate Carrie Soto for stealing her husband because husbands cant be stolen. Carrie Soto wasnt a thief; Brandon Randall was a traitor.
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Small boundaries broken, snapped like tiny twigs, so many that June barely noticed he was coming for the whole tree.
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But they were in love, the kind of love that hurts. They hit highs so high neither of them could quite stand it, and lows so low they weren't sure they'd survive them.
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Your whole world can be falling apart, she thought, but then Springsteen will start playing on the radio.
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She was a woman, after all. Living in a world created by men.
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What a gift it was to know so clearly what you were not, who you did not want to be. Nina wasnt sure shed ever asked herself that question.
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Accept accept accept. For so long, Nina had believed it was her greatest strengththat she could withstand, that she could endure, that she would accept it all and keep going. It was so foreign to her, the idea of declaring that something was unacceptable.
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She missed the parents who had never truly understood her, missed the man who had never truly loved her, missed the future she thought she had been building for herself, missed the young girl she used to be.
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When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people cant stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.
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Instead, Nina Riva stood on the edge of the cliff she'd never wanted, and looked out onto the water she wished was closer, and for the first time in her quiet life, screamed into the wind.
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Why take a chance on another book when I already know I like this one?
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Hud would love his child the way his mother had loved him: actively, every day, and without ambiguity.
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And Ive been really sad, Nina added. That Ithat I meant so little to someone who had made me believe I meant so much.
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She thought of her children like the magic grow capsules you got at gift shops at the science museum. These tiny little nothings that you drop into water and then watch as they slowly reveal what they were always destined to be. This one a Stegosaurus, this one a T. Rex. Except, instead, it was watching them become dependable, or talented, or kind, or daring.
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It was inevitable, wasnt it? The small mistakes and heartbreaks of guiding a life?
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Waves that beautiful are rare. That is the thing about the water, it is not yours to control, you are at the mercy of nature.
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She knew that she could not sustain her life fueled only by the memories of those she once loved. Loss would not propel her forward. She had to go out and live. She had to find new people.
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Kit regretted every single choice she'd made that had brought her to this moment. This is what she had always wanted to avoid, being forced to pretend men were interesting.
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It was the beginning of a lesson her children would learn by heart: Alcoholism is a disease with many faces, and some of them look beautiful.
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Someone should tell them all, Nina thought, paradise doesnt exist.
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Kit, particularly, grieved the way some people drink, which is to say: rarely but always alone and to excess.
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Men were bullshit - people were bullshit - and Nina was not going to live through bullshit white wearing high heels a single second longer.
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She was pretty sure she did not want to kiss any guy at all
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Our parents live inside us, whether they stick around or not, Hud thought. They express themselves through us in the way we hold a pen or shrug our shoulders, in the way we raise our eyebrow. Our heritage lingers in our blood. The idea of it scared the shit out of him.
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Children who grow up with money have no idea it exists. But children who dont understand that it powers everything.
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You were born a piece of shit and youll die a piece of shit just like every other piece of shit on this planet!
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What did it take? To say exactly what you meant? To feel comfortable in the middle of causing discomfort? To not feelso intrinsically as to be as vital to yourself as your bloodthat it was your responsibility to make things smooth and pleasant for everyone?
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Nina continued staring at Carrie but didnt say anything. How was it that this woman could shout out every thought running through her head? Why was it that Carrie Soto felt so entitled to scream?In that moment, Nina was not mad or jealous or embarrassed or anything else she might have expected. Nina was sad. Sad that shed never lived a fraction of a second like Carrie Soto. What a world she must live in, Nina thought, where you can piss and moan and stomp your feet and cry in public and yell at the people who hurt you. That you can dictate what you will and will not accept.Nina, her entire life, had been programmed to accept. Accept that your father left. Accept that your mother is gone. Accept that you must take care of your siblings. Accept that the world wants to lust after you. Accept accept accept. For so long, Nina believed it was her greatest strength - that she could withstand, that she could endure, that she would accept it all and keep going. It was so foreign to her, the idea of declaring that something was unacceptable.Nina thought of herself driving to someone elses house to scream on their front lawn while a whole partys worth of people watched. It was so impossible that she couldnt even summon a mental picture.But Carrie had this fire within her. Where was Ninas fire? Had it ever been there? And if so, when did it go out?Her husband had slept with Carrie last night and then Nina had taken him back this evening. What was wrong with her? Was she just going to accept it all? Just accept every piece of bullshit thrown at her for the rest of her life?
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We were born with magic in our hearts.
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This boy needed someone to love him. And she could dothat. That would be a very easy thing for her to do.She pulled him close to her, as close as she could, asclose as shed held her own babies the days they wereborn. She held him tight and she put her cheek to his headand she could feel him start to calm. And then, even beforehe was silent, June had already made up her mind.I will love you, June told him. And she did.
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But when the lights went out that night, and all of them lay in their separate beds, staring at the ceiling, June knew that she, and Nina, and Jay, and Hudson all had lost something. They were now living with a different-sized hole in each one of their four hearts.
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Mick married again, shortly after he divorced Veronica. The biggest star in Hollywood. It was a huge scandal, the talk of the town when they had it annulled the next day.
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Small boundaries broken, snapped like tiny twigs, so many that June barely noticed he was coming for the whole tree. With every move Mick made, as he held her, as he kissed her, June lost sight of the exact moment to speak up and then resigned herself to the pain of having never spoken up at all.
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just as it is in Malibus nature to burn, so was it in one particular persons nature to set fire and walk away.
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She could see her mother in her body, could feel her in her heart, could sense her in everything she did, sometimes. The older she got, the more obvious it became.
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Every day of your life feels like youre climbing up the mountain. And then you get there and you stay for a bit. And its nice at the top. But then you start sliding down the other side.
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Dolphins had been swimming along the shore in Malibu well before she was born and they would be swimming along the shore here in Malibu well after she left, and she took comfort in that.
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Im just sayingI dont come from any money at all. But I dont think what youre born into says anything about where youre headed.
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To do what had to be done. When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people cant stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.
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But I don't think what you're born into says anything about where you're headed.
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As with most of their disagreements, they found the anger dissipated as soon as they forgot to hold on to it.
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But she would welcome a certain type of man in particular: a good man, who was a nice guy, who didnt play games and understood that her career was important to her, that she could never quit the business, that she was living her dream. A man that could give her an orgasm every night and not expect her to make breakfast in the morning.
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