In February his mother made a breezy, half-joking comment about his love life and if there were any girls he especially liked this year, and he almost had to leave the room, he almost burst into tears. The idea now of ever asking a girl out, of taking a girl out and having her looking at him from right there close up, expecting him to be thinking about her instead of how primed he was and whether he was going to start sweating—this filled him with dread,
