You look like a protagonist.

Hey,' he said. It came out hard and frustrated. 'I told you to smile because you're pretty when you smile.' She walked to the bottom of the steps, then looked back at him. 'It'd be better if you thought I was pretty when I don't.

He already knows what I look like," Cath said. "There's no point in being tricky about it now." "How is doing your hair--and maybe putting on some lip gloss--being tricky?" "It's like I'm trying to distract him with something shiny.

She bent her neck back and kissed him like she never had before. Like she wasn't scared of doing it wrong.

His parents never talked about how they met, but when Park was younger, he used to try to imagine it. He loved how much they loved each other. It was the thing he thought about when he woke up scared in the middle of the night. Not that they loved him--they were his parents, they had to love him. That they loved each other. They didn't have to do that.

But the explanations fell apart in her hands. Everything true was too hard to write--he was too much to lose. Everything she felt for him was too hot to touch.

A little manic was what their house ran on.