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1 " But I know how this romantic stuff works: one girl's perfect guy is another girl's reject. And right now I'm glad of it. "
― Claire LaZebnik , The Last Best Kiss
2 " Hilary says to her sister, “You can’t eat only pie for lunch.” “Just watch me.” Lily plucks her ukulele out of the tote bag at her feet and strums it, singing, “Pie is fine. It’s very nice/ Especially with lots of spice/ Like cinnamon and ginger too/ My sis would like it, but she’s a poo.” “Oh, well, that’s brilliant,” Hilary says. “Taylor Swift must be looking over her shoulder. "
3 " Should we tell your father I’m his date for the evening, or should I just surprise him?” She pulls out a piece of tomato, inspects it, scrapes something off it, then sticks it back on the hamburger.“He won’t notice,” Hilary says. “He can’t even tell me and Lily apart, and look at us. Just look at us.”“My dad never calls me by the right name,” I say. “Only by my older sisters’. Sometimes he’ll call me ‘honey’ really awkwardly. He’s not the honey type, but it gets him out of having to remember my name.”Phoebe says, “All parents have trouble with names. I’m an only child, and my dad sometimes stops and says, ‘Uh, you. "
4 " They’re checking IDs,” he says, craning his neck to see what’s holding us up.I pull mine out of my pocket, and he tilts his head to see the picture on it. “You look different.”“It’s two years old.” I start to lower my arm, and he puts his hand on mine to stop me.“That’s how you used to wear your hair,” he says, still examining it, holding my wrist to keep it where he can see it. “The bangs . . . I always liked the bangs. I was surprised you didn’t have them anymore.”I flush. “I grew them out a couple of summers ago.”He releases my arm. “Did you get a good essay out of it? ‘What I Did Last Summer’?”“I’m saving it for my college essay. ‘How Growing Out My Bangs Taught Me Compassion.’”“Work a third-world country in there somehow,” he says. “Colleges like to see some global awareness.”The line takes us through the front door.“Progress,” Finn says.“Look.” I point to a kid who’s clutching some beads and murmuring to himself. “Is he actually praying right now?”“There are no atheists in the SAT line.”“Remind me to ask him in a few weeks if it helped.”“I’m guessing the success of his prayers will correspond to the number of hours he spent studying. "