In bed, Stephanie turns toward the wall and goes on sleeping. Agnes glances at her, registers the horror movie beat of someone trying to evade the killer and thinking they’ve been caught. It’s not a nice quality (and, more to the point, it is not an interesting quality), this tendency to react to the prospect of intimacy with immediate panic. She is aware, painfully aware, that there is nothing more tedious than a person who turns to another and says, I don’t know, I just find it hard to stay interested in someone who actually likes me. Nothing more tedious than a person who wears their
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