“It was a message from her. A reminder—here among hundreds of people—of a moment that had been theirs alone.”

“She had been ready to love this man from the moment she first saw him. In all these years, that had never changed. They'd hurt each other, let each other down, and yet, here they were after everything, together. She needed him now, needed him to remind her that she was live, that she wasn't alone, that she hadn't lost everything.”

“Her last call, at midnight, had been the worst. "I'll pull your cock out of your asshole," she'd said, and for some reason her voice at that moment had reminded him of his mother's.”

“No, what she had in front of her was a grown-up person who had built a life around a terrifying abyss, on terrain that had already collapsed, and yet who had succeeded, far away from here, among people Alice didn't know.”

“For her sex had always been about a borrowed connection. Wires patched together to make a unit long enough to transmit a message. That shared goal, those stolen moments when nothing else mattered but pleasure. When they ended, so did the link. The electricity faded. That wouldn't be the case here.”

“It would be a hard life, but it would be theirs alone. Here at the world's edge, far from everything familiar and safe, they would build a new home in the wilderness and do it as partners.”