Lord knows why I find you attractive, Michael, when you generally smell like weed and broken hobo dreams.

Kids without dads are desperate and jealous. Those with dads can be uppity and sharp.

To her, not packing our lunches every day or joining the PTA is a feminist rallying cry.

I don’t have enough gross words in my gross vocabulary to describe how gross that gross thought is. Gross.

Inside my chest, my lungs are wild animals, clawing at the cage.
"Oh, man," Autumn mumbles from beside me. "His smile makes me stupid."
Her words are a dim echo of my own thoughts: His smile ruins me. The feeling makes me uneasy, a dramatic lurch that tells me I need to have him or I won't be okay.

Light bursts behind my closed eyes, so intensely I nearly hear the popping sound. It's my brain melting, or my world ending, or maybe we've just been hit by a meteor and this is the rapture and I'm given one last perfect moment before I'm sent to purgatory and he;s sent somewhere much, much better.
It isn't his first kiss - I know that - but it's his first real one.