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