Sorry," I said to the Duke. "Eh, it's not your fault. It's Carla's fault. You were turning the wheel. Carla just wasn't listening. I knew I shouldn't have loved her. She's like all the others, Tobin; as soon as I confess my love, she abandons me." I laughed. "I never abandoned you," I said patting on her back. "Yeah, well, (a.) I never confessed my love to you, and (b.) I'm not even female to you.

You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you.

And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers.

I was a fairly shy person - not the hand raising type.

No woman should ever lie about another woman. You've violated the sacred covenant between women! How will stabbing one another in the back help women to rise above patriarchal oppression?

It is so hard to leave-until you leave.

The feeling of loving her and being loved by her welled up in him, and he could taste the adrenaline in the back of his throat, and maybe it wasn't over, and maybe he could feel her hand in his again and hear her loud, brash voice contort itself into a whisper to say I-love-you as if it were a secret, and an immense one.