Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

me self-consciously holding my left wrist in my right hand, as if I was afraid the wrist was going to get away from me.

explains the character right off the bat

Bobbi sat in the middle,

is she always going to be in the middle of this relationship

slightly famous like Melissa.

performing spoken word poetry together.

He asked Melissa if she had fed the dog, she said no.

they don’t seem like they like each other that much

“comforting in a kind of sedative way.”

Nobody liked her.

It was very easy to act unfazed around her. I just said: sure.

Does she actually though?

I wasn’t betraying anyone’s loyalties by being Bobbi’s girlfriend. I didn’t have close friends and at lunchtime I read textbooks alone in the school library.

I made lists of the things I had to improve about myself.

Bobbi and I broke up.

Why?

Just because I have a beautiful face doesn’t mean I’m a narcissist.

She never seemed to be either fully serious or fully joking.

warmed to you more, I have to say.

Yes, I felt we had a natural rapport, I said. I’m drawn to the poetic types.

I didn’t point out that Bobbi had only met Melissa twice, though maybe I should have.

I thought he was funny, I said. He hardly opened his mouth. Yeah, he had a humorous silence about him.

Bobbi told me she thought I didn’t have a “real personality,” but she said she meant it as a compliment.

How is that a compliment at all?!

It captured something intimate that had never really happened,

I should tell her I’m talking to a poet, she’d be very impressed.

She included Nick’s e-mail address and wrote: in case you need to get in touch.

Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go.

because to her Nick was just a function of Melissa’s unhappiness, and uninteresting in his own right.

Eventually the features of my face seemed to come apart from one another or at least lose their ordinary relationships to each other, like a word you read so many times it makes no sense any more.

Well, I said. Yeah, I’m kind of an omnivore. Melissa laughed at that. Nick looked at me and gave an amused smile,

I was aware of the fact that he could pretend to be anyone he wanted to be, and I wondered if he also lacked a “real personality” the same way I did.

It’s weird knowing someone just casually, he said, and then later finding out they’re observing things all the time. It’s like, God, what has this person noticed about me?

Like campus celebrities, that are only yours. It makes you wonder if you are anyone's

there’s something beautiful about the way you think and feel, or the way that you experience the world is beautiful in some way.

me e-mail a 21 year old in the middle of the night? i don’t know what you’re talking about. i would never do that.

started to realize how much time I spent appeasing him, being falsely cheerful,

Like how she acts towards the men at tbe poetry readings

I didn’t have the courage to really dislike her, but I knew I wanted to.

The remark definitely had sexual connotations, though it wasn’t clear to me precisely what they were.

I hate you. This idea just came from nowhere, like a joke or an exclamation. I didn’t even know if I really hated her, but the words felt and sounded right, like the lyrics to a song I had just remembered.

If I reminded Melissa of herself, was it possible I reminded Nick of Melissa also?

When

It feels like a big jump here, like I feel like they never really talked about this actually happening.

I was possessed by an overwhelming and intense energy that seemed to threaten me.

Why, are you jealous? I said. She smiled, but absently, as if she was thinking of something else.

I wonder if shes also having an affair

I told him I was easily seduced by people who laughed at my jokes and he said he was easily seduced by people who were smarter than he was.

Still, there was something blank and withholding about him.

It was just a joke, he would never really call me beautiful.

I wrote for an hour and a half, poetry in which I figured my own body as an item of garbage, an empty wrapper or a half-eaten and discarded piece of fruit.

I didn’t dream about her at night.

I wanted you to tell me that you dreamed about me at night.

Are you flirting with me? he said. Come on. Tell me you crave me.

Im rooting for them now

I could feel his chest against my back, and when I turned my head his mouth touched the rim of my ear. Frances, I want you so badly, he said. I closed my eyes. The words seemed to go past my mind, like they went straight into my body and stayed there. When I spoke, my voice sounded low and sultry. Will you die if you can’t have me? I said. And he said: yes.

wondered what she had meant by calling Nick “useless.” I couldn’t tell whether she was being affectionate or vitriolic; she had a way of making them seem like the same thing.

Do you think I have feelings for you? Don’t be embarrassing.

She always says the worst possible thing

I had left myself no one to confide

And after all that, he was in love with someone else.

Hes been marriedthis whole time!

I thought of the night before, when he told me that he wanted me, how it felt then. Just admit it, I thought. He doesn’t love you. That’s what hurts.