And Derek was... what? A pair of dark eyes that hid more than they revealed and some broad shoulders and a mouth that could be cold and thin and then suddenly widen into a generous grin just when you thought such a thing was impossible.

He was wearing a plain white oxford unbuttoned over a T-shirt, but something about the way they fit made him look put together, like an Abercrombie model (well, like an Abercrombie model who had remembered to put on a shirt that morning).

Basically, the world is a giant shithole. But some of us are capable of imagining something better.

Man, I hated not being able to figure someone out. And from the slightly uncertain look he gave me as we all went to class, I suspected he felt the same way.

Every guy seems nice until he’s not.

For a long time our son ws a little boy with autism, which was a certain kind of challenge. Now that he's a teenager with autism - and a teenager who notices girls - we're faced with something else altogether.

Juliana's a year older than me, but she sometimes seems younger - mostly because she's the opposite of cynical and I'm the opposite of the opposite of cynical.