Tell Me Lies

by Carola Lovering

And to everyone who’s ever had a Stephen DeMarco—this book is for you.

Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.

I shiver, thinking about how easy it is to be totally wrong about people—to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole…

The best feelings are unexpected like that. I woke up and they were there, like snow.

I didn’t know if I was addicted to the pain or if love was pain that you had to push through in order to access something greater, a final result you didn’t understand but stored your faith in.

It’s only when you do let this stuff happen to you that you realize your morals and actions are not as aligned as you’d hoped.

Lust and love erase ethical parameters, and that’s just the way it is.

It’s always boggled my mind the way the majority of individuals sit around waiting for the next event, then the next—subconsciously waiting for life to end.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake…

“You know what they say—charm is the ability to make someone think that both of you are quite wonderful.”

“chemistry is annoying, it happens”—but

Players only love you when they’re playing. Stevie knows best, right?”

all tragedies are comedies; all comedies are tragedies. All truth is a paradox.

“Love—real love—isn’t something you construct or hope or imagine or plan for the future. Love is something you live and feel in real time, in every single moment, big or small. It’s reciprocal and often unglamorous. But we bank on it because it’s what gives life meaning.”

“Everyone has that guy, Luce. That one guy you think you’ll never be able to shake—the one who gets under your skin and epically fucks you up for a little while. I know I did.”

“I get that now. Talking to Stephen tonight, I understood that, to him, I was always just this source of entertainment—this thing—and that he sees relationships as just these useful things, and I would never want to be that to anybody, not in a million years. I don’t even hate him, not anymore. It was just sad or something.”