“What we got,' Kelly said, 'we're stuck with it, even if our stubborn, rational brains might decide we're through. It'll always be there, whether we like it or not.”

“I’m gonna fall in love with you,” Kelly said. His words hung in the darkness, bright as candle flames.”

“You know your chances with me always get worse, the more you talk.” And Kelly finally shut up. For a block, anyway...”

“Let's quit our jobs and fuck all day.""Works for me. Think somebody will subsidize that? Maybe we could apply for some kind of research grant," she said.”

“My mouth could deny my interest in Kelly all day long, but my pussy didn’t lie. He felt like more than a single person. Two hands, a hard body, a mean voice. A one-man orgy. I’d leave here limping, just as he’d promised.”

“A beautiful young clerk might flirt with him as he browsed, but she'd never see what I did. She'd see only his shiny shell, snapped shut to hide a jumble of secondhand parts, ticking not quite as they should, but ticking nonetheless. A bit rusty. A bit erratic, like my heartbeat in the moments before I press his buzzer.”

“Is six a.m. too early to watch The Bachelor and mock all the giggly, desperate women?""Go for it. Though I bet it'd work better as a drinking game," Laurel said. "One shot for the flirty arm touch. Chug if they strip and bum-rush the pool." Anne hit play. "Like they'd get their hair wet."Laurel stared at the screen, laughed at Anne's comments but felt another weird pang upset her insides. "Would you say this show makes something incredibly complex--you know, relationships--into something mind-numbingly vapid? Or does it make something actually rather simple into a big fucking circus?""Both. That's why I love it.""I couldn't stand competing for a man like that," Laurel murmured. "I don't have the right...programming for it. Like to fight like that. Some people get an adrenaline rush and they're like foosh, give me somebody to beat down. I just, like curl up into a ball and want to hide." "I'm somewhere in the middle," Anne said. "I'm like a ninja. I'll like, come out of my shadowy hiding space and beat you down, bitches. You won't even see me.”