Bacon's on the way." He smiled. "Hey, they like you!" Wrath to Beth after the brother's bow to her.

Come here. I need to hold on to you." She felt the same way. And when there was no distance between them, it was like coming home.

She was seriously staring. Which was what you did when you got a gander at a man who is hung like a Louisville Slugger.

Destiny was a machine built over time, each choice that you made in life adding another gear, another conveyor belt, another assemblyman. Where you ended up was the product that was spit out at the end—and there was no going back for a redo. You couldn‟t take a peek at what you‟d manufactured and decide, Oh, wait, I wanted to make sewing machines instead of machine guns; let me go back to the beginning and start again. One shot. That was all you got.

The hardest thing is being with other people — it's like they're on a different wavelength, but only you know it. They talk about their lives and what's wrong with them, and you kind of, like, just let them go. It's a whole different language, and you've got to remember that you can only respond in their mother tongue. It's really hard to relate.

When Vishous pushed open the door to the exam room, he got a gander at the kind of seating arrangement that made him think fondly of castration.

In his fantasy, he kissed his best friend again, pulled back, and… “I love you,” he said into the spray of the shower. “I… love you.” As he closed his eyes against the pain, it was hard to know how much of what ran down his cheeks was water, and how much was something else.