Autumn Doughton

“I guess, sometimes the most inexplicable things end up being the ones that work the best.”

“Look, haven't you ever heard that musicians play from the heart? Well, I can't be expected to play in California when my heart's over two thousand miles away.”

“Life is unpredictable and it doesn't follow a map.”

“He looks at you like you're the only person in the room. Like he's trapped underwater and you're an oxygen tank. Like he's in anaphylactic shock and you're an EpiPen.”

“Here's what I think: it's one thing to know that rejection is coming, and it's an entirely different thing when it arrives.”

“Sometimes things don't work out like we plan. Like, maybe life has other things in mind.”

“But, here's a sad fact: perfect isn't meant to be. When you aim for perfect, you just wind up ruined.”

“This is no shy, just-between-friends kiss. This is a kiss unlike any that I've ever had. It's the kiss of a hundred thumping kick drums, a raging earthquake.”

“Crushes are for fourteen year olds. Ellie, I would describe what's happening to you as falling.”

“I can assure you that a kiss under the influence does not equal long-lasting romance.”

“I'm being fair, it was the best kiss of my life- a kiss that finds all your seams and pulls them apart, stitch by detail stitch.”

“I love you back - in a big and epic way.”

“That's it. I've had enough of this talking crap. I reach my hands up. I cup his chin and bring his mouth to mine.”

“Ellie, I came back early because I was driving everyone around me crazy. When I wasn't texting you or talking to you, I was talking about you, and thinking about you, and wondering about you...you get the idea.”

“Then I wake up. And, it's not the purple- hued light of the house at three in the morning that has woken me, or the sound of Payton stumbling into the bathroom. It's a hand. A single hand. So innocuous. I feel it before my eyes blink open. A slight weight on my hip. A current of electricity running through me, reshaping the air that I breathe. It takes only a second for me to process what it is, to rearrange the spaces in my head around the feel of his fingers on my body.”

“Insecurity is like a net, and I let it catch me.”

“If the question is: what's more mortifying than professing your love to a boy and having him turn and walk away from you? The answer is: professing your love to a boy, while standing in front of your friends, parents and a hundred strangers, and having him turn and walk away from you.”

“And, you know, when all is said and done, it really is better to wind up feeling scared and stupid than not feel anything at all.”

“Happiness isn't something that you plan for. It comes knocking unexpectedly, just like opportunity. And it's up to you to answer the door and invite it inside.”

“When he speaks into my hair, it is barely a whisper. 'Willow, it's never too late. And there's always a way to begin again.”

“She grimaces. 'Yeah, maybe you were a bad friend but I'm a good friend so I understand and I'll take you back. Let's just begin again.”

“I can barely breathe but I think that his lips might be better than oxygen at the moment.”

“You're the bright spot in my day.”

“And there's always a way to begin with.”

“Alex was a world. He was an entire galaxy. A universe of possibilities.”

“People are just preprogrammed to want what they don’t have. It’s like it’s a universal law.”

“You dump trash. You dump yard waste and old ripped couches that smell like body odor and forgetfulness. You dump cigarette butts and banana peels and hazardous waste. But people?”

“You know, I never should have let you not be my friend. It's not healthy for either of us.”

“In fact, I noticed everything about Alex. Like that his left nostril was slightly larger than his right nostril. And the way he ate a Kit Kat bar: chocolate first and then the layers of wafer separately. I could pick his one sneeze in a room full of sneezers.”

“Oh. My. God. I'd been dissed. Majorly. Because I was an ugly, disgusting ogre. Snot was probably pouring from my nostrils onto the ground.”

“I wanted to turn away but I was trapped in that spot--in that moment--by those moon eyes. Because even though I couldn't see them, I could feel them looking at me and they burned me so badly that my legs didn't work.”

“I have serious issues with families in coordinated clothing. Just sayin”

“I'm miserable but the thing is that I want to be miserable. It's kind of nice. Like a comfortable sweater that you put on around teh house but wouldn't be caught dead wearing in public.”

“My pulse is buzzing and my stomach is a riot of butterflies and half-digested peanut butter cookies.”