Problematic Summer Romance (Not in Love, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

When we were thirteen, Jade offered to hit me with a hockey stick to see if it would “redistribute stuff, maybe?”

Tiny follows her, trampling over me to run into the arms of the one human for whom he’d bury us all in a ditch.

I refuse to fuck a lawyer.” “Why?” “It’s incest, Maya.

“Now that I’ve caught you up with the rotations of Earth around the sun, goodbye.” I make to hang up, but— “No, not goodbye.”

Even in the sudden collapse of my life, I have a single certainty: next week’s nuclear astrophysics test.

and then I had the cutest little grape-sized gherkins to snack on,

It’s as if I asked to borrow his kitten’s entrails for my soup.

Each time, my stomach politely asks me if it could keel over. No, I say flatly. In this body, we endure.

“I’d like to diversify my insult portfolio for the evening, and I have already sampled your offerings—”

“All of these things you listed, a dog could do.”

Conor’s musical taste leans toward industrial techno music, or, as I like to call it: construction site noises.

Unfortunately, Nyota’s whispers seem to have the acoustic power of a sperm whale.

“What in the seven seas is that monstrosity, and why is it breaching the sacrosanctity of my bedchamber?” “A magnet,” I say innocently, forcing her to accept it. “Of the flag of Sicily. You’re welcome.”

And by we, I mean you’ll do the work, and I’ll stay away to avoid withering them with my aura.

“Is breakfast ice cream really the litmus test for societal development?”

“The Mayageddon,” Sul whispers.

i cry

and you nearly destroyed Hark’s ability to have children with your knee.”

“No. It’s always water this and water that, but when I try to drink the blood of my enemies—”

I was able to catalogue my reactions to psychogenic substances with the dedication of an amanuensis monk in a fifteenth-century scriptorium.

“You okay?” I ask, cautious. “Yeah.” A deep inhale. “Yeah. I just wanted to listen to you exist.”

build a small villa in its center. She

perfect hookup place ;)

“Should I have talked about your PhD?” “I never got one.” “Don’t be modest, Conor. You have a pretty huge dick.”

“It’s a beloved pastime of mine, watching you drag them to the brink of death and then squirm to Rue and beg for resuscitation—”

Also, I’m scared of Maya. And, to a lesser extent, of Hark.”