"Your cheekbones look amazing!" one kid screams. "What do you use as highlighter?"
"Unicorn sweat and the tears of my exes!" I scream back, and they squeal with laughter.

DON'T MESS WITH THE GIRL WEARING PURPLE LIPSTICK

"This reminds me of when we were kids," I whisper.
"Me too."
"Do you ever feel torn between the past and the future?"
He rests his arms behind his head and looks up at the ceiling. "What do you mean?"
I chew on the inside of my cheek as I try to find the words to explain it.
"You're grateful for everything you have now," I say slowly, "and you wouldn't change anything, right? But you're also sad that everything has changed so much. And you can't ever go back to how things used to be."
"Do you want things to go back how they used to be?" he asks, sounding skeptical.
"Not all of it, obviously. Just some things." I groan. "Never mind. I'm just in a weird place right now."
"I know," he says. "That's why I'm here."

Jeremy was keepong him forever. "Leland Barrett," he whispered, his voice an eager, warm, library hush. "Please show me around this town, this library, your house, and you." He paused. "And take your time. I want to know everything."

"I don't scare everyone away. Just the miscreants."
"Miscreants, oh my god." Jeremy clutched at the shelves behind him to stay on his feet. "Yeah. I'm stealing you. Get coffee with me, outside, or I don't know - let's go for a walk. Recite poetry to each other. Whatever it is people do in this situation."
Benj smiled, a wide, startled smile as if the last thing he had expected Jeremy to say was also the best thing he could have said.

Jeremy was difficult at best. He bent the rules. He'd annoyed Benj on purpose for no other reason than to see his famous temper in action. He was already planning their wedding. He was kind of a mess.

Jeremy wondered if Benj was going to blush at being caught, and considered the idea with real pleasure. He had no clue what it meant, that he wanted a blushing Benj and a meanly clever Leland but, God, he did. He wanted the total package. They'd move in together while Jeremy worked on his doctorate, and then get married the following May or June. Maybe June, when the kids were out of school and Benj would have more free time.

Jeremy had personally never fucked anyone in the stacks, not for a lack of trying. The problem with being one of those people fascinated by everything was that he annoyed those humans around him who didn't think it was funny to learn and question and talk about woolly caterpillars, or geographic profiling, or shoes and ships and ceiling wax, whatever. By date three, Jeremy was usually left alone with his running thoughts and his dashed visions of weddings and white picket fences.

"I told that to Noah, and he said them pretending it never happened is also a microagression," Gavin said. "I want to fuck the shit out of him when he starts ranting about social justice. Is that normal ?"

Simeon touched my hand, fingers so tentative and so light it broke my heart. He shouldn't be afraid to touch me.

It sucked, and there had been a lot of resentment until Marcus and Gavin had adopted me as their bud. Well, Marcus had adopted me. Gavin had just growled at the other guys who'd questioned my skills.

"That's very nice," I said. "Sweet actually. To reduce a lifetime of work to -"
"Oh, calm down. You're both like twenty-seven."
"Sweetheart -"
"If you call me one more condescending sexist pet name -"
"I'm sorry ! Fuck." I ran a hand over my hair before shooting Simeon a look. "Can you just do the fucking talking ? Christ. I'm incapable."
"Glad you finally realized it, Bravo."

"Why would you flirt with her when you don't like ladies ?"
"Why not ? It's fine, and she's pretty."
Adrian gave me big, owlish eyes. He was so boyishly adorable it was hard to hate him for long periods of time. I solved that little dilemma by reminding myself that he was a douche canoe.
"You find women attractive ?"
"You poor sweet child. Unlike cis hetero men, who think admitting another man is attractive will turn their fragile sexualities in a different direction, I'm more than capable of admiring a beautiful woman without questioning my shit."
"Huh."
"I'm just opening all kinds of new worlds for you, ain't I ?"

"How would you feel," he said coldly, "if everyone around you used a part of who you are as the butt of a joke ?" Simeon's fingers rose and pressed into the center of my chest. "People you respected. Other football players. Coaches. Managers. Fans. All of them. What if they all talked about how something deep inside you, something you can't change and don't want to change, makes you less of a fucking man ? Of a football player ? Makes you shady in the locker room ?"

"Hold it right here, Emo Elmo." Nash grabbed Spencer's shoulder to stop him. "What are you doing ?"
"Nothing." Spencer blinked in surprise. "If you must know, I'm angry."
"How's busting up your hand working out for you ? Feeling any better ?"
"No."
"Your ex piss you off ?"
"Of course he does. He's my ex. Pissing me off is his new career."

"I can deal with your whole anxious masculinity thing when it's just your thing, your problem, your defect, whatever - never let it be said I don't love a charity case - but if you're gonna try and make it my problem, too, then that's not on. I'm not here to try to coddle your insecurities. I'm not here to try to impress your outdated understanding of masculinity. I'm not here to play any kind of part, in fact : I'm not here to live up to your 'standards' and I'm not here to be your failing example of manliness that you can measure yourself up against and always win, either."

And he seriously neeeded to get himself together, because hadn't he decided ages back not to put too much weight into shows of basic human decency ? Sure, it was nice (and safe, one could never overlook the importance of safe) that Derrick was so accepting, but it didn't mean he deserved a medal or anything.

"So you work a job where you have to put your hands into tanks of king crabs and probably get lit on fire and jump off of buildings and shit, but you're scared of a little dog ?"
"That is not a dog !" Ginsberg exclaimed, and with his flair for drama, it was no wonder he was on TV. "It's a rat ! A lab experiment gone wrong !" A furry demon ! A chupacabra !"

The scene where Levi and Carter were facing each other down was so tense and laden that it seemed like the most erotic thing Kevin had ever seen on screen. Like they couldn't decide wether to fuck or kill each other, ot both, or even in what order.

"Maybe. How do I know if I'm actually a writer ? If all of this falls through and all the work was for nothing and..."
"Have you tried stopping ? Do you still hear voices of people who don't exist ?"
"Yeah."
"Commiserations, you're a writer."

Like shower sex, chivalry and noblesse were overrated.

Gene wasn't very tall. Maybe five six tops, and he reminded me a bit of Daniel Radcliffe. Brown hair, big smile, thick neck. He joked, "I can't imagine who wrote the label on this box. Don't they teach people how to spell in Backwater Bay ?"
"Being bad at spelling doesn't make you less intelligent. It just means you can't spell."
The words spewed forth from a place in my past when i was the smart one - the protective one - and Ari couldn't spell the word coffee if both our lives depended on it.

Don't fall for a straight girl, Daisy. That was literally the first rule of being a lesbian.

There were plenty of queer girls that came into the café, but since it was a small town, I'd either dated them, or dated girls who had dated them.

"Are you seeing anybody ?" I blurted out. Why. Why was I like this ?

"Did you know there's a phenomenon called phantom rain, where it's so hot that the raindrops evaporate before they hit the ground," Corbin said.