“That's not how relationships should be," he finished, thrown a little off balance. She'd said those words with such flat, empty hopelessness, as if this was a lesson she'd learned the hard way. As if it was a simple fact that love would ask too much for her, and so she couldn't or wouldn't try. He wasn't sure if the look in her eyes was weariness or an echo of something sharper, harsher. Either way, he didn't like it.
"I know," she told him slowly, as if explaining something to a child. "I don't do things right, and I don't think I want to. It all seems awfully dull and inconvenient. That's why I've chosen to abstain.”