Here is a link to chapter 5 of the novel Nothing Else Occurs to Me by Amy Welborn
In a dark theater, about halfway through what she supposed was a date, Elizabeth took stock. On the bright side, Jake hadn’t tried to touch her. Excellent. Maybe she’d live to tell the tale, and it would be a boring one.
Not that the whole thing was horribly awful so far. She couldn’t say that she actually really liked Jake, but she couldn’t say that she disliked him either. He was fine. He was slightly good looking, even with that thing on his neck.
The thing, which could have been a big zit, could be a small boil, showed because Jake had radically changed his look so his stubbly long neck was now actually visible to the world. A change that Elizabeth so smoothly mentioned after she dropped her house keys on the floor of his old tiny white dinged-up car, reached down to get them, bashed her head on the dashboard and, trying not to yelp in pain, blurted out, “Hey, you got a haircut!” instead.
Jake nodded, and – sort of grossly – ran his finger over that – thing, and nervously mumbled something about getting his ears lowered. Elizabeth tried to smile. They were both nervous wrecks, but for probably different reasons.
