Do people call you Ollie?” Lola asked. Oliver looked at her, completely dumbfounded by the possibility of this nickname. She may as well have asked him if people call him Garth, or Andrew, or Timothy.“No,” he said flatly, and the only thing charming about him was the way his accent seemed to run through every vowel with one syllable. Lola’s eyebrow twitched in her single tell—mildly annoyed—and she lifted her flashing LED drink cup to her lips. Lola wears mostly black, including her glossy dark hair, and has a tiny diamond pierced into her lip, but, even still, she’s never been able to pull off the full physical manifestation of the angry Riot Grrr. With her perfect porcelain skin and the longest eyelashes in the world, she’s simply too delicate. But once she decides you’re an asshole, it no longer matters to her what you think. She gives good glare.“The flower suits you,” she said, tilting her head to study him. “And you have pretty hands, kind of soft. Maybe we should call you Olive.” He grunted out a dry laugh.“And a really beautiful mouth,” I added. “Gentle. Like a woman’s.”“Aw fuck off.” He was laughing outright by then.

— Christina Lauren

Everything feels yes.

— Christina Lauren

Figure out how to balance Oliver with a career you’ve wanted your whole life,” he tells me. “Because you’ll end up with neither if you think you have to choose.

— Christina Lauren

For the first time in my life I was admitting defeat.

— Christina Lauren

He closes the door with a determined click, and I hear him call to a flight attendant, and I sink down onto the toilet seat, resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands as I listen to him through the

— Christina Lauren

He could only do rowdy because he felt what I felt: that whip-crack unleashing that comes when you meet the person who frees you

— Christina Lauren

He's not recruiting me to the oiled-up Gay Bliss Club of Northern Utah, but to the LDS Church.

— Christina Lauren

High school is such an incestuous little pool.

— Christina Lauren

His voice is both low and quiet, and it has this hypnotic rhythm to it. I wonder whether someday he'll give sermons with that voice, whether he'll throw down judgement with that voice.

— Christina Lauren

Honestly, he'd said more perverted things to my face. To my boobs. Did he really think he was schooling me in being sexy right now? Really? You're completely unimpressed? Zzzzzzzzzzz, I wrote back.

— Christina Lauren