With Love, from Cold World

by Alicia Thompson

Maybe her glasses kept Daniel from seeing it, like she was a character in a teen rom-com.

The trick was not to watch anything you actually liked with Kiki, as she showed no mercy in ripping any media to shreds.

libby core (i say lovingly)

Elliot’s parents have a cake delivered to the house every year on the anniversary of when Elliot came out to them. And it’s Publix buttercream, so you know that shit’s real love.”

“I know that trick. You want the name so you can buy it for yourself and smell me all the time.” “I’m not going to buy it—” “You want to carve a little soap doll of me. It’s sick. I refuse to feed this obsession.”

’S all right,” he said. “I don’t mind being objectified.”

“Shit,” she said. “I just broke the first rule of Secret Santa, didn’t I? And I had to do it to the chief of Christmas police himself. This was entrapment. You tricked me into saying it—”

Earlier, she’d felt a stirring from watching him wrap a present, for crying out loud, which she told herself was only because she found extreme competence a turn-on.

It turned out that Lauren’s strategy at the beginning of the night of looking at herself in the mirror and repeating you are fun you will have fun wasn’t as effective as she’d thought it would be.

“Did you just . . . find a playlist where all the songs had ‘party’ in the title?” Her eyelids flew open, and she looked up at him. “That’s exactly what I did. Why?”