Boyfriend Material (London Calling, #1)

by Alexis Hall

I’ve never seen the point of fancy dress parties. You have two choices: either you make a massive effort and wind up looking like a dick,

or you make no effort and wind up looking like a dick. And my problem, as always, was not knowing what kind of dick I wanted to be.

There should really be a word for the feeling you get when you do a thing you

don’t particularly want to do to support somebody else but then realise they didn’t actually need you and nobody would have noticed if you’d stayed home in your pyjamas eating Nutella straight from the jar.

“You really do own your illiteracy, don’t you?” “Yeah, I’m thinking about moving to America and running for public office.”

“Someone else’s actions may affect you. But what other people choose to do is about them.”

We were both quiet for a moment.. “Will it…will it ever stop hurting?” “Non.” Mum shook her head. “But it will stop mattering.”

This was why relationships sucked: they made you need shit you’d been perfectly happy not needing.

And then they took them away.

“Yes, but you’ll slowly discover that you’re not as different as you initially assumed, and then he’ll surprise you with how thoughtful he is, and then you’ll come to his rescue in an unexpected moment of need, and you’ll fall madly

in love with each other and live happily ever after.”

“Are we really bad at this?” I asked. “We’ve been fake dating for three days and we’ve already fake broken up once.” “Yes, but we fake resolved our difficulties and fake got back together, and I’m hoping it’s made us fake stronger.”

And if

we let happy things make us unhappy when they stopped, there would be no point having happy things.”