The entire room was so yellow that it looked like the sun had thrown up on the walls and wiped its mouth afterward on the dresser and curtains.
---Cole

Aren't you afraid?'
'Of what?'
'Of losing yourself.'
'That's what I'm hoping for.

You're not that girl,' Cole said, sounding tired. 'Trust me, I've seen enough of them to know. Look. Don't cry. You're not that girl either.'

'Oh yeah? What girl am I?'

'I'll let you know when I figure it out. Just don't cry.

Come on," Cole said. He looked back over his shoulder at Mr. Brisbane, who was looking at me with a complicated expression as I left. Cole pointed at him and said, "You're a son of a bitch. He belongs here more than you do.

He'd only been gone two seconds, but the room got brighter when they were together, as if they were two elements that became brilliant in proximity. At Sam's clumsy efforts to carry the vacuum, Grace smiled a new smile that I thought only he ever got, and he shot her a withering look full of the sort of subtext you could only get from a lot of conversations whispered after dark.
It made me think of Isabel, back at her house. We didn't have what Sam and Grace had. We weren't even close to having it. I didn't think what we had could get to this, even if you gave it a thousand years.

I felt a tickle on my skin; it took me a moment to realize that Cole was driving his die-cast Mustang up my arm. He was laughing to himself, hushed and infectious, as if there was still any reason to be quiet. He turned the car around at my shoulder and headed back down to my hand, the wheels skidding a bit when he laughed.
I thought it was the truest thing I'd ever heard from Cole St. Clair.