“I suggest you...Fuck."Even if it was an invitation, I doubt I would have been able to take her up on it just then. Inspiring as she could be in bed, I just didn't have it in me at the moment.”

“It was clear that Eleanor had been to bed with a large and random collection of people, but when I suggested she go to bed with me, she said, 'I don't think we should, just at the moment, do you?' As a man I found this pretty fucking insulting.”

“If I could only make her fall in love with me. Pretend to be a writer and just fuck her and have her cook for me. I would never have to write I’d just pretend.”

“Be with me" she said simply "Just for here. Just for now. With gentleness and friendship. To take...the other away. Give me that much of yourself."I wanted her. I wanted her with a desperation that had nothing to do with love, and even, I believe, little to do with lust. She was warm and alive and it would have been sweet and simple human comfort. If I could have been with her and arisen from it unchanged in how I thought of myself and what I felt for Molly, I would have done so. But what I felt for Molly was not something that was only for when we were together. I had given Molly that claim to me; I could not resend it just because we were apart for while.”

“Four years of sitting in your room reading, and now you're out here with the common folk," I say. "What did inspire you to suddenly make the trip?""I would have come sooner," she says, brushing her hair out of her face. "You just never invited me.”

“You just don’t get it, do you? You have no idea how important you are to me. I need you to be okay, Taryn. I can’t be without you, you have to be here and okay or I would be able to fucking function.”