I just want the pleasure of noticing these things at a safe distance.

I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

How about I call you when I finish this?” “But you don’t even have my phone number,” he said. “I strongly suspect you wrote it in the book.” He broke out into that goofy smile. “A nd you say we don’t know each other.

Is that what relationships become? A reduced version of the hurt, nothing else let in. It was more than that. I know it was more than that.

I think forever is an incorrect concept.

Her underwear, her jeans, the comforter, my corduroys and my boxers between us, I thought. Five layers, and yet I felt it, the nervous warmth of touching – a pale reflection of the fireworks of one mouth on another, but a reflection nonetheless. And in the almostness of the moment, I cared at least enough. I wasn’t sure whether I liked her, and doubted whether I could trust her, but I cared at least enough to try to find out. Her on my bed, wide green eyes staring down at me. The enduring mystery of her sly, almost smirking, smile. Five layers between us.

Abligurition: an actual, if very obscure, English word, which means the spending of too much money on food.