One Day in December

“I really need to take life lessons from Sarah—she sees what she wants and she grabs it with both hands. I wish for the millionth time that I’d had the balls to get off that bus.” 

This quote is significant in a couple of ways. First, it presents a juxtaposed quality between Sarah and Laurie that will remain consistent throughout the novel. While Sarah knows what she wants and goes for it, Laurie is timid in aggressively pursuing her dreams. Secondly, had Laurie been a bit more like Sarah, she could have reached the mystery man before Sarah eventually meets him. There is a deep irony in this quote: Sarah is giving Laurie advice that Sarah will unknowingly use herself to get the attention of the same man Laurie is pining after.

“Tree moss vivid around the iris edges, warm amber gold seeping in around his pupils. But it’s not the color of his eyes that strikes me so much as the look in them right now as he gazes down at me. A startled flash of recognition. A dizzying, headlong collision. And then it’s gone in a heartbeat, leaving me unsure if the sheer force of my own longing made me imagine it had been there at all.” 

This vivid imagery captures the moment Jack and Laurie see each other for the first time since the magic of the bus stop. Jack and Laurie describe one another’s eyes in detail to themselves, the locking of the eyes a powerful way for them to express what cannot be said out loud. Here, Laurie calls the connection a collision because of the context in which they are meeting, and Jack quickly turns away. Laurie’s uncertainty as to whether Jack remembers the bus fuels her inability to pursue him throughout the novel.

“And so it begins. A hairline crack has opened up in our relationship that Sarah isn’t even aware of, and I have to work out how I stop it from widening, how to prevent it from opening up into a chasm we’re both going to tumble headlong into.” 

This is the precise moment when Laurie decides she will continue to keep the truth from Sarah. She knows that there will eventually be a widening of the crack. This moment of foreshadowing invites the reader to wonder when and how that tumble will begin. 

“I’ve always got off on the feeling that I’m running to keep up with her, it keeps me on my toes, but lately she’s sprinting so fast that sometimes I feel like I lose sight of her altogether. It’s disconcerting, a low-level niggle that I stamp down every time I catch up again.” 

The imagery of a race Jack uses here is an apt metaphor for what it’s like to be with Sarah. Sarah pursues what she wants with ardor, a quality Jack doesn’t quite have. He admires this in Sarah and is attracted to it, but he also finds it worrisome and exhausting. Though it comes early in their relationship, this quote foreshadows their eventual burnout.

“They say that the human brain likes to follow repetitive patterns, and I’ve found that to be quite true. Jack now inhabits an appropriate place in my life as my friend, and as my best friend’s boyfriend, and in return I allow myself to enjoy his company and I like him. I really do like him so very much.” 

This quote highlights a layer of the theme of love. Although Laurie’s original feelings for Jack are of deep romantic love and lust, by getting to know him through the context of Sarah’s relationship with him, Laurie develops a real bond with Jack. This friendship is important as it provides the building blocks of their path to coming together as lovers. Also notable here is Laurie’s insistence that it’s the human brain that likes repetitive patterns, not her heart that can’t let go of Jack.

“The lavender shades in the tweed bring out the color of her eyes, but they also highlight the dark, bruised circles around them. She’s tired, I notice with a jolt, and it’s not ‘I just need an early night’ tired; it’s ‘I’ve had the shittiest few months of my life’ tired, the eyes of someone who’s worried and has been for a fair while. I realize I haven’t even asked her how she’s doing.”

Here, Jack describes the color of Laurie’s eyes with similar nature imagery that Laurie uses to describe Jack. This quote demonstrates another powerful example of Laurie and Jack’s ability to communicate through eyes and without words. Jack can intuit Laurie’s problems, problems that he takes very seriously.

“You know how some events turn out to be the big stepping-stones between one part of your life and the next? I don’t just mean the steps you intend to take, like leaving home or starting a new job or marrying the person you love on a summer’s afternoon. I mean the unexpected steps: the middle-of-the-night phone calls, the accidents, the risks that don’t pay off. My twenty-third birthday turned out to be one of my unexpected stepping-stones […].” 

This quote highlights the theme of coming of age. Laurie is put in a heartbreaking situation when she learns her father has had a heart attack, and his recovery and ill health teaches her not to take life for granted. By Page 94, Laurie is not with the man she loves, not in the job she wants, and unmoored by the fragility of her parents. These big stepping-stone moments are the ones that challenge Laurie and make her a better, stronger person for her future.

“If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that to acknowledge my memory of those few moments at the bus stop would be a monu-fucking-mental mistake. Our entire friendship is built on the dynamics of my position as her best friend’s boyfriend. I wait in silence and she withers in front of me. The jittery shimmer in her eyes dims, and I know she wishes she could suck those words out of the air between us and back inside her body. If I could, I’d blow them back in there myself rather than have to hurt her with a lie.” 

This quote represents a key moment in the plot. Jack can tell Laurie he remembers her from the bus, and if he says it, they might have the strength to tell Sarah together. Jack hesitates, however, allowing Laurie to carry the burden of humiliation and guilt. He is torn between not wanting to hurt her with a lie and maintaining the status quo. 

“I’m so very tired of swimming. Most of the time I feel like the tide is going to pull me under, but here in Jack’s arms I feel as if he’s just reached over the side of a life raft and hauled me to safety. I realize, bleakly, that I don’t think there will ever be a time when I don’t have feelings for this man.”

Here, Laurie uses the motif of swimming to describe her sheer exhaustion at her life with and without Jack. Jack is contributing to her feeling of being pulled under, but Jack’s presence and ability to comfort her make her feel safe. She foreshadows that there will not be a time when she doesn’t have feelings for him.

“[…] for a split second I long to open the door of the cab, to stop history from repeating itself. I don’t. Of course I don’t. Despite the fairy-tale snowstorm out there, this isn’t Narnia. This is London, real life, where hearts get kicked and bruised and broken, but somehow they still keep beating.” 

Laurie can seize the moment and pursue what she wants, but she drives away from Jack. Her rationale that she is not living in a fairy tale is true but also a cheeky nod to the reader, who may be experiencing the same irrational feelings as Laurie in her journey, but in the context of a make-believe story. Laurie ends this important section of the plot and of her character development, acknowledging the strength of her own heart.

“The New Year is less than two hours old, but nonetheless, I kissed Jack last year, not this one. This one is a clean sheet.” 

This quote captures the motif of holidays as a cycle for character development. Laurie takes the New Year very seriously every year as a clean slate. She starts the year with resolutions and positivity, and later in the book, when she loses her optimism, this cyclical structure allows us to see how her positive attitude deteriorates as the years go by. It’s also notable that Laurie believes this new year to be a clean slate even though she has acknowledged that she’ll never not have feelings for Jack.

“I didn’t cry because the trek was so strenuous, although it certainly was. I cried with sheer relief, hot, salty tears, releasing my heavy burdens into the earth as I walked. […] I am having some kind of mini epiphany. I’m like an in-patient in recovery, learning how to forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made…Perhaps one day I might even deserve to be happy.” 

This quote exemplifies the propulsion of Laurie’s character development and her dedication to change. In Thailand, she feels freed from her past life, able to have brighter vision for the future. She is able to see just how self-destructive her situation with Jack has been and chooses to embrace her epiphany as a vehicle towards the future happiness she now knows she deserves. This is almost an ironic moment, because shortly after she will meet and fall in love with Oscar, who will only give her temporary and fleeting happiness.

“There’s something about living in a different place that allows you to be whoever you want to be.” 

Laurie is relieved to be away from her stresses back home and feels free to explore different sides to her personality in Thailand. She develops new muscles, literally and metaphorically, meets a new man, and allows herself the ability to be happy. Laurie believes it is the place that is helping her to change, foreshadowing that when she and Oscar return to England they will be in danger of yet again falling into the context of their place.

“For a second we hold a silent conversation with just our eyes. I tell him that I know he’s running away from the responsibility and stress of the city life awaiting him back in London, and he tells me he can paper over the cracks in my heart and make me better again.” 

Laurie believes in eyes as a means of communication. She and Jack often speak through eye contact, and here Laurie is applying that same connection to Oscar. This foreshadows a problem for Laurie later on in the book—namely, that she and Oscar do need to be very explicit with one another and not rely on assumptions made through eye contact. Oscar can’t make her better again, and Oscar is not running away from the stressful life he actually loves.

“Everything seemed far simpler in Thailand; we got to know each other while stripped back to whatever basics we could fit in a backpack. Here among the trappings of our usual lives, our differences seem more stark.” 

Upon arrival in England, Laurie’s worry is confirmed: England highlights the differences between her and Oscar that they could ignore in Thailand. Although Laurie notices this early on, she still forges ahead with her relationship with Oscar. This quote emphasizes the idea that Oscar is not Laurie’s one hundred percent, but even so, Laurie is determined to make the relationship work.

“I’m struck by how much they’ve changed in a relatively short time, or perhaps how they seem to have grown up without me. It’s subtle: a gloss on Sarah, a layer of self-assurance on Jack. Oscar has it too, to an extent; he’s now firmly entrenched in his role at the bank alongside his brother, and although we speak most days I’ve become aware of something edging between us.” 

As the years go on and Laurie becomes more cemented in her relationship with Oscar, she starts to see the people around her as growing while she stays stagnant. Her perception of Sarah’s gloss and Jack’s self-assurance are just that: perceptions. Jack is in fact feeling more self-conscious than ever. These misconceptions are important to Laurie’s character development because the more she feels that Jack, Oscar, and Sarah are growing and getting better, the more she feels that she’s being left behind, leading to even more self-isolation.

“In the early days of their relationship I selfishly hoped their romance would be short-lived, but over time their love has become an integral part of the map of my life; a massive island I’ve had to reroute my own path around, yet rely on to locate myself all the same.”

This quote is a clear way of demonstrating Laurie’s complex relationship with Sarah and Jack. The very thing that is sustaining her is also dragging her down: Sarah and Jack’s romantic relationship. Laurie commits herself to a doom-like attitude that she must reroute her path on the island instead of trying to escape the island all together. This quote emphasizes the triangular nature of these three characters: When together, they all simultaneously need each other and over-rely on one another.

“I told him that there comes a point where you have to make the choice to be happy, because being sad for too long is exhausting.” 

Laurie is telling the story of giving advice to a reader of her teen magazine to Jack, fresh off his accident. While Laurie is telling the story to try to help Jack feel motivated to get better, Laurie is also speaking about herself. Laurie had to make the choice to be happy because her life with and without Jack was too exhausting. Her choice was Oscar, but it was a choice made in order to avoid a problem. That Laurie is using this as advice for a teenager and for Jack demonstrates how much she has committed to believing that one can make oneself happy.

“That’s the thing about flowers, isn’t it? They’re lush and extravagant and demand your attention, and you think they’re the most exquisite thing, but then in the shortest time they’re not very lovely at all. They wilt and they turn the water brown, and soon you can’t hold on to them any longer.” 

Here Laurie is using the inconsistent beauty of flowers to comment on her relationship with Jack. Jack gave her the flowers as an apology for the way he acted towards her after his accident, but Laurie uses the flowers as a symbol to explain to herself why she is with Oscar. Unlike Oscar, Jack provides unreliable joy in Laurie’s life. What is interesting about this metaphor is that eventually it will be Oscar who turns the water brown.

“The only thing we have in common is Laurie, and she’s becoming more like him and less like us by the day.” 

In this quote, Jack is lamenting a change he has noticed in Laurie since she has been with Oscar. This quote is important for two reasons. The first is that the reader is invited to see how similar Laurie and Jack are: She thinks Jack is the one changing, and Jack thinks Laurie is the one changing. Secondly, this quote highlights how much Jack resents Oscar for being such a big part of Laurie’s life, effectively pushing Jack out of the picture.

“I remember the first day I met Sarah, and the first time I saw Jack, and how very tangled and complicated our lives have become over the years. We are a triangle, but our sides have kept changing length. Nothing has ever quite been equal. Perhaps it’s time to learn how to stand on our own, rather than lean on each other.” 

This quote demonstrates Laurie’s realization that her leaning on Jack and Sarah for so many years has creates an unequal relationship on all ends, leading to more problems than solutions. This is the moment when Laurie decides to commit her devotion to Oscar instead of continuing thinking about Sarah and Jack. Laurie went to Thailand to find herself, found Oscar instead, and is now ready to move on from her reliance on Jack and Sarah. What she doesn’t seem to realize here is that this separation will lead to self-isolation and sadness. Laurie believes that giving up on her deep friendships is one way of growing up, but she will soon discover how important friendships truly are. 

“It’s not that I don’t love Oscar or that I don’t want to marry him. It’s nothing like that. It’s just crushing to know that it’s still there, like a muscle reflex.” 

Laurie tries on a wedding dress and shocks herself at the prospect of marrying Oscar instead of Jack. The quote is important because it demonstrates that Laurie’s goal to forget about her feelings for Jack and move on from the trifecta is harder to accomplish than she thought. It’s striking that she uses the term “muscle” here as a metaphor for her feelings for Jack because in Thailand, she developed metaphorical new muscles that were meant to help her forget about Jack.

“I’m hemorrhaging the people I love and I don’t know how to stop it. Is this just a fact of life? You have to grow up and shed your old friends like papery snakeskin to make room for the new? [...] there are other places and there will be other times.” 

Laurie’s determination to commit her devotion to Oscar is catching up with her. Now lonely, Laurie continues to believe that growing up means growing out of your friends. Laurie is forcing a separation that is not natural to her relationships, she but keeps herself positive by remembering that things in her life have always gotten better, and therefore so will this present aloneness.