“Anyway. The night didn't go so well because I broke his nose, which was an accident that happened when I hit him in the face because he touched my arse.”

“The night didn't go so well because I broke his nose, which was an accident that happened when I hit him in the face because he touched my arse.”

“I can't believe you're still mad at me," Ed says."You grabbed my arse.""You broke my nose.""You broke his nose?" Jazz asks. "You grabbed her arse?""It was two years ago-""Two years, four months, and eight days," I tell him."-and I was fifteen, and I slipped and she broke my nose.""Wait a minute. How do you slip onto someone's arse?"Jazz asks."I meant slipped up. I slipped up and she broke my nose.""You're lucky that's all I broke," I say."You're lucky I didn't call the police."Leo, Dylan, and Daisy slid into the booth. "Did you guys know that Lucy broke Ed's nose? Jazz asks.Ed closes his eyes silently and bangs his head on the wall.”

“I loved someone so much that I broke up with him because I didn't want to get hurt. Then when he proved he loved me back, I broke up with him again. I'm a fucking mess, but so are you. Most of us are.”

“You grabbed my arse.''You broke my nose.”

“Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck." He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble — Ira's marble — won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it.”