Yes & I Love You (Say Everything #1) - Roni Loren Page 0,35
leave. “Wait.” She let out an exasperated breath. “You know it’s not that I don’t love you or that I don’t believe you have talent. And it’s not even that I don’t want you here. I’ve enjoyed having you back in town. I hated you living so far away. But I’m saying all this because I love you. Someone needs to be straight with you.”
“And that’s you.”
“Yes.” She smirked and squeezed his arm. “It’s the big sister’s job to kick the little brother’s ass.”
Jasper was still irritated, but being called her little brother always stroked some starved part inside him. He never got tired of hearing that he was part of an actual family—even when it was his sister being a self-righteous nag. “Noted. I love you, too. Even though you just took a big stinking dump on my life plan.”
She puckered her lips and made a smooch sound. “Having any kind of plan would be a start, but maybe focus on finding a place to live first.”
“Believe me, that’s item number one,” he said, tone wry. “At least at my next place I can save myself from the sound of Timothy in the throes of passion. The guy sounds like he’s being murdered. What the hell are you doing to the dude? Beating him?” He put his palm up. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”
Gretchen’s eyes went wide, and her hand dropped from his arm. “You can hear us?”
He snorted. “People three houses down can hear him. I’ve never heard you, thank God. I don’t think I’d recover from that trauma. But believe me, I want my own place more than you want me out of this one.”
“So what are you going to do? Like, for real?” she asked. “Do you need me to loan you a little—”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’ll figure it out.”
I always do.
Chapter Nine
Give Me More Movies with Awkward Grown-Ups
By Miz Poppy
One of the most popular tropes in teen movies is the awkward girl or boy working through their social ineptitude. We know the routine. The hero or heroine is hopelessly shy or awkward. They don’t know how to dress or fix their hair. The girl has never swiped on a coat of lipstick—because apparently, shyness equals not being able to properly apply makeup. Also, glasses, they usually need glasses because myopia and introvertedness must be genetically linked. They also have a tendency to bump into things and knock over chairs. The character is the Before picture in the makeover side-by-side. We’ve seen it time and again, so why do we watch?
We watch these movies because we can identify with the hero and heroine in some way (because everyone feels weird and out of place as a teen, right?), and we know what’s going to happen. There’s a comfort in knowing the hero or heroine is going to be saved from the plague of awkwardness. They are going to land the supercool/hot/out-of-their-league love interest (See: Sixteen Candles, Dirty Dancing, Mean Girls, American Pie, Twilight, Pretty in Pink, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Dumplin’, and The DUFF) get a gaggle of cool friends (See: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Clueless, The Breakfast Club), and, if they’re really lucky, a makeover montage (See: She’s All That, Clueless, Mean Girls). Or, if you’re in a horror movie like Carrie, you’re going to kill all those bitches in a PMS rage and get the ultimate revenge. Either way, you’re going to be relieved of that pesky shyness. And probably get a happy ending. Hooray! High school cures all!
Yeah. Okay. I don’t know about you, but speaking as a card-carrying introvert, that’s not how it works. If you’re shy and awkward as a teen, you’re probably going to be shy and awkward as an adult. And there’s nothing cute or adorable about it. So where are my awkward adult movies, Hollywood? Where is my heroine who doesn’t always have the snappy comeback and who isn’t effortlessly chill? Where is the woman who isn’t in need of a makeover montage but also doesn’t have a pack of friends to hang with because she’s too intimidated to strike up a conversation with new people? The most the awkward adults get are side roles for comic relief.
Do we not want to see those movies because identifying with an awkward teen is universal but imagining yourself as an awkward adult is just sad? When does it become not okay to be shy? What happens when people don’t