She knows better than to confuse apologies with affection. People are always sorry, so when he crawls toward her on the mattress she knows to wait for it, to sigh and say, It’s fine, only instead he surprises her, says: I love your brain. She doesn’t know what to deal with first, the use of “love” or the fact that it isn’t what she was expecting, or the idea that anyone can possibly think fondly of her brain when she has put almost no effort into molding it.
