“You're the bright spot in my day.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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