He looked like someone with a steerage ticket on the titanic. Somebody who'd be standing in line at Ellis Island. Undiluted and old-blooded. Also cute.

October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!

In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can't Google.)

I don't like hello. It makes me sound like I have dementia, like I've never heard a phone ring before and I don't know what's supposed to happen next. Hello?

He tried not to love that she could recite scenes from Ghostbusters, that she liked kung fu movies and could name all of the original X-Men— because those seemed like reasons a guy would fall for a girl in a Kevin Smith movie.

She wanted to lose herself in him. To tie his arms around her like a tourniquet. If she showed him how much she needed him, he'd run away.

Cath wished she didn't use the word "just" so much. It was her passive-aggressive tell, like someone who twitched when they were lying.