Nothing Burns as Bright as You

Ashley Woodfolk

• Publisher: Versify
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9780358683551
• Print ISBN:
  9780358655367

Five starred reviews!

From New York Times bestselling author Ashley Woodfolk, Nothing Burns as Bright as You is an impassioned stand-alone tale of queer love, grief, and the complexity of female friendship.

Two girls. One wild and reckless day. Years of tumultuous history unspooling like a thin, fraying string in the hours after they set a fire.

They were best friends. Until they became more. Their affections grew. Until the blurry lines became dangerous.

Over the course of a single day, the depth of their past, the confusion of their present, and the unpredictability of their future is revealed. And the girls will learn that hearts, like flames, aren't so easily tamed.

It starts with a fire.

How will it end?

• Sapphic Romance: An all-consuming, earth-shattering love story between two girls who can’t stay away from each other, even when they know they should.
• Best Friends to Lovers: They were inseparable. Then one kiss changed everything, blurring the lines between friendship and a dangerous, all-consuming obsession.
• Angsty Romance: Told over the course of a single, reckless day, their tumultuous past unravels in a flood of passion and pain.
• Toxic Relationship: Fire and water, burning and freezing. Their love is a beautiful, destructive force, and when they set a fire, it’s a metaphor for their entire relationship.
• Heartbreak: A poignant exploration of what happens when love isn’t enough, written with the raw, lyrical honesty that only a novel in verse can capture.

1. Opposites

You think it’ll be funny

to start a fire.

You always thought starting fires was funny.

Whether they were real, like the way you’d write down wishes

and set the pages ablaze in your backyard,

or less than real, like the endless fights you started with me

(only with me).

Fire was always a joke.

And matches burned holes in your pockets

the way money burned through mine.

You’d started fires on street corners and under bridges.

In empty alleyways and at the ends of joints lifted and held steady,

our eyes locked and loaded before we smoked.

This time, though, feels different.

Dangerous.

This time, you want flames to fill the dumpster in the school’s back lot.

The joke, you say the night before we do it,

is that this whole year has been a dumpster fire.

And what better way to celebrate it ending

than with a literal dumpster that’s literally on fire?

I thought it would be better

to flood the back lot instead.

Less obvious, I insist.

Easier to get away with.

Because water could be accidental

in a way arson could not.

Pipes burst.

Tides ebb.

Sewers get blocked by fallen leaves.

Things leak and overflow sometimes

just because it’s a thing things do.

(But combustion is only very rarely spontaneous.)

I could imagine the miniature disasters that might follow a flood—

Ant-sized tsunamis.

Tiny tidal waves.

A slippery, perilous surface to cross

if it was cold enough.

It’s a metaphor, I say. Because we’re all under water.

Either swimming

or drowning.

But you aren’t into it.

And this

is a perfect metaphor

for us:

Fire and water. Flames and frost.

Hot and cold, burning and freezing.

Opposites.

You never could get the heat of your body

(your temper like tinder,

your being wanting to burn)

under control.

But I like it when you are in control.

I always want to be close to the inferno of you,

even if it kills me.

A lie:

“Opposites attract.”

The truth?

Magnets attract.

Opposites fit together like (fucked up) puzzle pieces.

And when you’re fucked up, there are more important things than attraction.

Like distraction. Like destruction.

Opposites distract.

Opposites destroy.

Opposites decimate.

Opposites detonate.

Opposites are fun as hell,

until they aren’t.

703 Days Before the Fire

You took me to your basement room.

It was filled with mismatched furniture:

wrought iron chairs and

two cushy couches and

a four-poster bed with a princess canopy.

Nothing went together.

So everything did.

You sleep down here? I asked.

Yessss, you said, teeth hissing like burning paper.

There were patchwork quilts and

concert posters.

Christmas lights and

an aquarium shimmering with fish.

Sunshine-yellow sheets and

piles of books and

so many candles.

There was a rainbow painted across the floor instead of a carpet.

Gay, I whispered, looking down at all the colors we stood atop.

You laughed.

Yep, you said, lips popping like firecrackers.

I could see you in that bed,

under the low ceiling covered in glow-in-the-dark stars,

lying awake above the rainbow.

Making wishes. Setting tiny fires.

Reading poetry and texting me back with your dark hair

bleeding across ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• After the Fire
• 867 Days Before the Fire
• 1. Opposites
• A lie
• 703 Days Before the Fire
• 2. The best fire starters
• 515 Days Before the Fire
• A truth
• 3. More of you
• 437 Days Before the Fire
• A lie (I kept telling myself)
• 4. Come with me
• 415 Days Before the Fire
• A truth
• 5. Windowless room
• 1,232 Days Before the Fire
• 6. Good Kids™
• A lie
• 1,101 Days Before the Fire
• 7. This closeness
• 373 Days Before the Fire
• 8. We’re both monsters
• 349 Days Before the Fire
• 9. This could get ugly
• A truth
• 322 Days Before the Fire
• 10. Spilled ink
• 316 Days Before the Fire
• A lie
• 11. Lock and key
• 299 Days Before the Fire
• 12. Menu of Possibility
• 281 Days Before the Fire
• A lie
• 13. Her pt. 1
• 274 Days Before the Fire
• 14. Her pt. 2
• 268 Days Before the Fire
• A lie
• 15. You the ocean and me
• 963 Days Before the Fire
• 16. Love-drunk
• A lie (you told me)
• 921 Days Before the Fire
• 17. Like a bomb
• 240 Days Before the Fire
• A truth
• 18. Anywhere
• 226 Days Before the Fire
• 19. Temple Heights
• 199 Days Before the Fire
• 20. The smallest lies
• A lie
• 153 Days Before the Fire
• 21. Half-full
• 898 Days Before the Fire
• 22. You’re always right
• A truth
• 888 Days Before the Fire
• 23. Violence delights you
• 121 Days Before the Fire
• 24. Smother it
• A lie (or maybe a prayer)
• 103 Days Before the Fire
• 25. This is hell
• 81 Days Before the Fire
• A truth
• 26. A sudden savior
• 64 Days Before the Fire
• 27. They are coming
• Lies
• 38 Days Before the Fire
• 28. Your little friend
• 16 Days Before the Fire
• A truth
• 29. There was love
• 5 Days Before the Fire
• 30. No hard feelings
• After the Fire
• A lie (we’ll tell ourselves until it becomes a truth)
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Praise
• Copyright
• About the Publisher