“If it winds up earlier, you should have a movie picked out. This is assuming she isn’t sending you the ‘let’s go back to my place’ signals. In that case—”“Don’t go there, Bob. Let’s just not go there.”

“Let’s order too much of something just to see where our limits are. Let’s take a chance precisely because it might fail. Let’s take the hard way out. Let’s go to the moon. Fuck it; let’s go to the moon again. Let’s quit our jobs. Let’s work at being better at what we do by fucking up faster, not less. Let’s fuck up really fast. Let’s wrestle sharks, fight monsters, and disagree with the board. Let’s borrow so much money it becomes someone else’s problem. Let’s start a 10-hour drive by announcing “I’m not into you anymore.” Let’s dump everything out of the garage onto the sidewalk and build something really cool in that space. Let’s start out to build a better mousetrap, and halfway there let’s decide to jump on the mice’s team.”

“A child isn’t born bitter. I point no fingers as to who tainted the clean, pure pool of my childhood. Let’s just say that when I realized that I didn’t want to grow up, the damage was already done. Knowing that being grown up was no swell place to be means that you are grown up enough to notice. And you can’t go back from there. You have to forge another route, draw your own map.”

“I tell everybody, I’m tired of being jerked around. Okay? So let’s just not pretend. I don’t have fuck for a heart. You people are not going to make me feel anything. You are not going to get to me.”

“I know,” he said, very softly. “Let’s go home. Let’s go home, and you can tell me whatever you want, and I’ll believe you.”

“If you want, I can carry you—” “I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Let’s go.”He’d said that wrong. He should have said, “I want to carry you.”