When you're a professional you do your job no matter what gets in the way. You might take a sick day, you might take a personal day, but then you show back up or you won't get paid. Everyone develops his/her own strategy for dealing with days that are not productive.

I really, really wanted to lose awareness of the here and now. The best way for me to do that was bury myself in a book.

We could go back to your house. I can stay with you always. We can know each others bodies in every way, night after night. I could love you. I could work, you would not be poor. I would help you.

I was embarrased, horrified and absolutely ready to jump him!

When you've been really beaten, you realize that you are just an envelope of skin, an easily penetrated envelope that holds together a lot of fluids and some rigid structures, which in their turn can simply be broken and invaded.

Should I just bite you, and end it all?", he whispered. "I would never have to think about you again. Thinking about you is an annoying habit and one I want to be rid of.

If it's easy to be friendly she will be. If the wind blows the other way her friendship will be gone. And I'm thinking the wind is blowing the other way. She has found some other way to be an important person in her own right by hating others.