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The cover is humiliating. I don’t know who made the executive decision to put naked male torsos on romance novels, but I have a sneaking suspicion that some big-shot marketing executive
wanted to shame me into buying an e-reader so I wouldn’t have to be seen holding this in public.
My roommates call me a hopeless romantic. I let them. It’s nicer than being called a lonely hermit.
He’d whisper dirty things to me too. Not lines out of a bad porno, but poetry. Words of passion.
“So,” he says, “Thursdays and Sundays, you party.” “Yep.” “And on Fridays, you sit behind that front desk reading porn.”
“I’ve never kissed anyone sober,” I admit, my entire face flushing with heat. Vincent’s face softens.
“Then practice on me,” he offers. “I’m here. I’m all yours.”
But Vincent doesn’t seem to mind that I’m not perfect, and maybe that’s all that matters.
Life is far too short to let my shot at feeling like I’m in a romance novel pass me by.
I let my eyelids flutter closed, embracing my newest kink: being read to.
“Courted? I’m sorry, is this Victorian England?” “No, this is Starbucks.”
Reading is so much fun, but I’m tired of feeling like all the best parts of my life have been lived inside my own head.
“Then for the sake of being direct,” he says, “I can’t stop thinking about you, Kendall. And I’ve read every goddamned poem Elizabeth Barrett Browning ever wrote. In three weeks. For fun.”
Look—yes. Sometimes art imitates life. But you always oversimplify things so you can tuck them into neat and tidy boxes. It’s like you’re doing a literary analysis of your own fucking life to avoid actually living it.”
“I love that you think in stories, Kendall. I do. It’s beautiful, and romantic, and deeply entertaining.
But sometimes, when I crack a dirty joke, I wish you wouldn’t sigh and act like you’re not thinking the same thing. Because I’ve read some of the books you read, girl. They’re filthy.”
“You’re allowed to be horny, and you’re allowed to be sensitive and nervous and all the other things you are. You don’t have to be an archetype either. You can change. You can be whatever you want to be.”
We’ve kissed hundreds of times now, but somehow, we still come together with the primal force of two waves crashing against each other. I’ll never get sick of it.
For one perfect, wondrous moment, the world stops spinning and the stars wink at us through the window.
