Tropesick Quotes

“Mikey was just as bad! They both did that shit all the time! You were just too blind to see it! It could’ve been either of them! What would you say about Mikey, then? If he’d been driving that day instead?”
“You end things with that boy,” she said. “You end them today or else.”
“Or else what? What are you going to do? Cut me off? Send me away? I’m almost twenty-six years old!”
She looked right at me. I was trembling, but it didn’t matter. I still held her gaze.
“It’s your family or him,” she said. “You can’t have both. I won’t survive it.”
I shook my head. And then, before she could see me fall apart, I turned and walked away.
It was the easiest decision I’d ever made.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“Three glasses of wine and two dozen dresses later, I stepped into a structured faille Oscar de la Renta. Absurdly puffy— and dreamily green. I twisted to coax the zipper up the side of my ribs, then poked my head out from behind the screen.
“Well?” Meredith said.
As I made my way toward the mirror, she beamed. On the pedestal, I pushed the falling chiffon sleeves fully off my shoulders and practically squeaked. The bodice’s boning was impeccable, and the skirt was the grandest, most romantic thing you’d ever seen.
“I’ve been sketching something like this for myself since I was a kid,” I said.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“With my hands bundled into the pockets of my coat— fuchsia with a giant bow in the back— I darted into the pharmacy and headed straight to the holiday aisle in search of what I'd come here for: Chapstick, a spool of pink ribbon, ten yards of cellophane, and as many oversize conversation hearts as twenty dollars would buy me.
I was making Valentines for everyone in the drama club. I always did. Valentine's Day was kind of my thing.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“After that, we were off to the races. There was no other way to describe it. We were, after the first go-round, absolutely feral. There was no more sweetness. There was no more timidity. I had been bent over the stove, the sink, each and every one of those upholstered poufs. I had come in Tyler’s mouth, in his hands, while he pulled my hair, while I filled a just-occurred-to-me plot hole in our manuscript, while I ate a bowl of cornflakes on his bathroom floor.
By sundown, I could not walk, and we curled up in bed, channeling whatever we’d done to each other into seven thousand words of pure erotica— sixty-five hundred of which we’d surely cut from our draft as soon as we emerged from our oxytocin-induced fever dream and remembered other people were going to read this thing.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“Katie,” I said.
“Yeah?” she said, taking all of me. Using her mouth, her hands. Her hair was soft and wild, and landing in auburn waves just below the lacework that barely covered her swelling breasts. My fingers peeled back the hem, careful and hungry and curious. She stripped the rest of the gauze away and moaned as she filled my hands.
I cursed, then pulled myself back, fell to my knees, and kissed her. I kissed her neck, her collarbone, the hard, hot tips of her nipples. I kissed every valley and curve and stretch and plain. The slopes of her stomach, the pinch of her waist, the undersides of her smooth, damp wrists. She tasted like vanilla, and sweat, and a little bit like soap.
“When I close my eyes,” I said, “it has always been you. You and you and only you.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“She was wearing a pair of blue shorts and a T-shirt. No makeup, no glitter, no headband, and it was the most beautiful she'd ever been. Right here, in my arms, in this quiet and horrible, moon-drenched place. Here she was, eyelashes lined with tears, irises blindingly green, the dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose, copper and sun-kissed and there for the counting. Her heart, practically levitating, some pink-gold and glowing thing I could almost wrap my fingers around. Was this what it meant to wear your heart on your sleeve? Was this what it looked like to be good? To shine on anyway?”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“Yet,” she said, and then she was on top of me, tickling me like a child, under my arms, beneath my knees, laughing and laughing, morning light bathing the cottage, salt and dew and summer in the air, her eyes so bright and her smile so blinding I could’ve died right there, being attacked by this absurd, gorgeous little creature, who, despite everything, had not forgotten how to play.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“There’s just one bed, isn’t there?”
“Obviously,” he said.
And then it happened. I couldn’t help myself. I burst into laughter, and the tears came back too, and I could not stop any of it: the hot, wet rush of salt storming down my face, the heaves of sheer ridiculousness escaping my stomach. It was all so absurd. The kiss, the storm, the keys, the cottage. That every last trope in our story was taunting us. That every scene we’d written, every watershed moment and throwaway detail and stolen glance, seemed to come back for us— seemed to play out like pages of a frame story in our hands.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“Katie," I said again.
"Yeah?" The water, by now, was just below her collarbone, clinging to her skin, lifting her breasts, and turning her dress into nothing— into tissue paper, into a scrap of drenched, sheer silk. And that was when, out of nowhere, it began to drizzle. Out of nowhere, without warning, it began to rain.
"This is in our book," I said.
"It's all in our book," she said.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“You remain to be the most annoying, outrageous, inexplicably absurd thing I've ever seen. With your highlighters and your heart-shaped sticky notes and your seven hundred different colors of glitter pens and the fact that you never wear any clothes."
"These are clothes!" She pointed to the gauzy linen shirt she was wearing as a dress. It was sheer, unbuttoned past her sternum, and riding up her thighs. Underneath it, still, was today's bathing suit: hot pink, and criminally small.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“You write literal bodice rippers for a living. Don’t you want to be with somebody who sees you? Don’t you want to feel like your soul’s on fire? Like your heart’s going to explode?”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“I kind of baked a lobster potpie,” she said.
“How does one kind of bake a lobster potpie?”
She chuckled, then traipsed back down the stairs. I followed her featherweight steps, one after another, as she floated into the kitchen, explaining how she’d begun making her way through a Barefoot Contessa cookbook she’d found on her second night here.
“Anything you want,” she said, pointing to a notepad splayed out on the island, “you put on the list, and I think Maurice just goes to the market and buys it.”
I traced Katie’s loopy letters— raspberries, ricotta, good vanilla— while she cut into the pie’s golden crust. Steam escaped, and my mouth watered.
“Two sticks of butter,” she said, licking the back of the knife after she served us each a slice.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“Pinot sat on the bottom step of Meredith’s front porch, one paw on what appeared to be a picnic basket. His blue eyes, piercing. We walked toward him, very slowly. Gravel crunched under our feet.
Tyler kneeled down, flipped open the wicker lid, and peeled back a layer of blue and whit gingham. “What the…?”
I joined him, my heart rate calming, my bare knees numb against the warm rocks. Fresh-baked French rolls and lobster salad with chives and a blackberry crostata. Two sets of silverware, real plates, linen napkins. A bottle of white wine. A bottle of sparkling water. An envelope with our names on it. I picked it up.
“I don’t—This wasn’t… Did she open the door? Did she hear us?”
“Open it,” Tyler said. “Just open it.”
I nodded. It was cardstock. Heavy. Once again, cream with navy piping.

There’s nothing like the Hamptons on a Tuesday in late June. The sun, hot. The beaches, empty. The riffraff, stuck in the city. Wander around, enjoy lunch, and get your bearings. I have a feeling you’re going to need them.

Yours,
M.B.

Tyler turned to me as I flipped over the note. On its back, a hand-drawn map of Southampton: ponds and pastry shops and Meredith’s private drive, all there in deep blue ink.
“Who the fuck is this woman?” he said.
The cat meowed, then swished away. My heart was racing again.
“I honestly have no clue.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“You act like this industry is a joke— like it's just smut, like it doesn't matter! It does matter! Love makes people happy! It makes the world go round! People read this stuff when they're sad, when they're horny, when they're dying, when their lives are falling apart, when they're too scared to—"
"Katie," he said again.
"You don't get it, do you? How good it feels to believe in something! To believe your person is out there! That one day, everything is going to finally make sense, finally fall into place! To hang on to something like that, despite your fear, despite how lonely you are, despite how many times you've been hurt”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“Should I text you, or…?”
I was trembling from head to toe, but composed myself enough to say, “Didn’t they teach you how to interpret the subtext at Brown?”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“Why are so many women desperate to open bakeries? Why are everyone’s parents always dead? Why are the love interests always named Josh?
“That,” I said, “is the beauty of romance. We don’t let the fact that things are a little implausible get in the way of a good time.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“Please, just meet me somewhere. Hear me out. I never meant to hurt you.
Just as fast, she wrote, Sounds like you’re really torn up about the consequences of your own actions, Tyler. Why don’t you repeat your senior year of high school, write an essay about your coming-of-age experience, and magically get into Brown?
Suddenly, my fists were hot, my throat was dry, and my pulse was pummeling. My fingers flew across the keys so quickly I did not know what they’d decided to say until I’d already sent the message.

You know what, Katie? It’s genre fiction, not a mission to Mars. Selma does not have time to find anyone else. I’ll write the boy. You write the girl. We’ve practically done this twice already anyway, and I cannot go back to her and have this conversation again. I’m going to end up blacklisted, and so are you. So, in the interest of making rent, just deal with it. It’s three months.

For a minute, bubbles. For a minute, dots. And then, she sent this:

Fine.

I stared at it, then closed my eyes. Softness. Quiet. Here it was: a chance, a window. But as soon as my heart rate had begun to calm, another ding.

I don’t want to see you, though.

I grimaced and then wrote, I realize there’s not much reading between the lines in romance novels, Katie, but rest assured: I know how to interpret subtext.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick

“The path to happily ever after is rarely a straight line. And every love story— no matter how predictable— is always, always earned.”
― Lauren Okie, Tropesick: A Novel