Jackie Tiernan

“All month he had been saying things like this: things that sounded like jokes but weren’t. Every time, as he heard his own voice, James bit the tip of his tongue, too late. He did not understand why he said these things to Nath, for that would have meant understanding something far more painful: that Nath reminded him more and more of himself, of everything he wanted to forget from his own boyhood. He knew only that it was becoming a reflex, one that left him smarting and ashamed, and he glanced away.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

“it occurs to me somewhere between my first bite of ravioli and my fourth episode of GLOW that I could have sent Ethan back to the hotel and gone out myself.”
― Christina Lauren, The Unhoneymooners

“Home.’ By Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.” He barely kept his hand from lifting to brush back her hair. “I don’t know that one,” he managed. “I’ll text it to you before I go to sleep. It’s perfect.”
― Tessa Bailey, Hook, Line, and Sinker

“Fred looked a little more hopeful. “So you did want to talk to me?”
― Alex Michaelides, The Maidens