To make him important in one’s life requires an overactive imagination. Unfortunately, mine never knows when to quit.

George says that if you look at the person someone chooses to have "a relationship" with, you'll see what they think of themselves. So Harrison is what I think of myself. It's hardly a relationship, but nevertheless he is a choice. I examined all the options and chose the most likely to leave. No emotional investments. Never love for me—only obsession. Someone has to stand still for you to love them—my choices are always on the run.

I have filled him in to be unobtainable, disinterested, attractive and bored with my company. My ideal mate. Someone to endure, never to enjoy. I am totally at his mercy. I suffer through the silence, imagining that he is suffering my company. That I am merely an alternative for nothing better to do. I'm frightened of the power I have given him over me and of how he will almost certainly abuse it, merely by not being fully aware he has it.

One not only has to read between the lines, one has to fill him in altogether. Because he's not there. To make him important in one's life requires an overactive imagination. Unfortunately, mine never knows when to quit.

A tiny part of me felt like I'd won the man lottery and here I was both counting and spending the money. Our skin agreed. We pressed our luck—first his, then mine, then ours—until we had smoothed our way into the thick of it, until nothing else was possible except to get through to each other, in and on through each other, until we eased into the other side.