The Upside of Unrequited

by Becky Albertalli

I want to introduce her to Douglas.” He pauses, and I can see him swallow. “I’ve been talking to her about you.”

I am entirely made of butterflies.

There’s this thing Patty told me about, where your stomach pretty much functions like a second brain. They call it the enteric nervous system, and it lives in your gut, and when it thinks there’s an enemy nearby, you get this surge of hormones. It’s sort of a fight-or-flight response. And I guess it applies to crushes, too.

“How do you go from better than Mini Eggs to thinking I don’t want to kiss you again?”

Because that’s the thing about change. It’s so painfully normal. It’s the most basic of all tragedies.

I don’t know how I ever went five minutes without kissing, much less thirty-two thousand minutes.

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of Reid’s weird mind. Ever.

It’s butterflies and haziness and heart eyes, but underneath all that, there’s this bass line of I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this is me. I can’t quite articulate the sweetness of that feeling. It’s finding out the door you were banging on is finally unlocked. Maybe it was unlocked the whole time.

“You know, if I’d ever liked girls, you’d have been the one, Molly.” I don’t think there are words to explain how I feel. Okay, you know the emoji that’s laughing and crying all at once? It’s that. I am that.

I think every relationship is actually a million relationships.

“I could never actually be a wedding photographer,” says Olivia. “Why not?” “Too many perfect moments. I can’t keep up with them.”