Falling for Your Best Friend's Twin (Love Clichés, #1)

by Emma St. Clair

She’s like a mullet, business up front but a lot of fun hidden out back. Wayyyyy out back, behind a chain-link fence with razor wire. I’ve seen the out-back side of Zoey only a handful of times, and it’s like a unicorn sighting. I’ve often wondered if Zane, equally as uptight and all-business, has the same fun side hidden somewhere. I’d pay good money to see it.

Charla spins so quickly that her towel lifts, giving me an eyeful. That’s one way to wake me up. Did she mistakenly use a hand towel? Or a washcloth?

I swear I read something about a vampire facial. Heck to the no.

But the logic does nothing to erase the sheer panic I’m experiencing as I stand in a dressing room with just a robe covering me. “Do I have to get naked?” I asked the woman who handed me the robe. She only laughed, like she thought I was joking. I wasn’t. This day has felt like a fun house, where every room is worse than the last. Maybe if it hadn’t started with me stripping down to nothing and getting hosed off in a room with a drain in the floor. This is what they do to prisoners. I half expected them to dump some kind of lice treatment on my hair or give me a flea dip.

“Women are a treasure. A gift. What do you do with treasure?” “Hoard it?” I’d asked, being a snarky fifteen-year-old. Mom had smacked me on the arm, but she was smiling. “No, Smaug. You protect it. You guard it. You always remember its value.”

Abby keeps her beauty like a pearl, tucked away, tightly protected. Not that she isn’t gorgeous on the outside, because she is. But the more time I spend with her, it’s like she’s opening bit by bit to reveal the true treasure. It's one worth fighting for. One worth going after.

Dear Dr. Love, I really love my boyfriend. Like, totally. The only problem? I’m a Mac girl and he uses PC. Every time we take a step forward, we take a double click back. I’m tired of his hands all over my touch screen, and don’t get me started on the dongle problem.

think our software needs to be updated and we might be hardwired for failure. Any words of advice? Sincerely, Dongled in Detroit

Hey, circulatory system: slow it down! Respiratory system: in and out, nice and steady. That’s it. There we go. Breathe. Reproductive system: you have not been called to active duty. Stand down, soldier. I’m talking to you, ovaries. Nervous system: stop being so … nervous. Skeletal system: way to be solid. Carry on.

There’s something about standing hip to hip with my mama in the kitchen where I grew up, pulling the husks off corn that warms me from the inside out.

Zoey’s uncharacteristic silence is like the ocean

pulling back before a tsunami. It’s unnatural and should serve as a warning to run for high ground.