“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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