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They had sex that night, which was for the best, since he didn’t think his ego could handle an extended period of time in which he wondered if she thought of him as a friend or an actual romantic contender. He kept thinking, “She’s a real girl.” Not in a sexist way. No, in a Pinocchio way. She was …

He spent nights waiting for her innumerable study groups to disband so that she would arrive home and consider having sex with him. More often than not, though, she would politely beg off because sex kept her up, which destroyed her chances of succeeding at the thing (the test, the paper) that was …

[...] They held hands sometimes, which they hadn’t done in years, and which he realized was a completely counterproductive, backward thing for them to do. There was calm, and with the calm came relief, and the relief felt in his body the way endorphins did, and he became worried that he would mista…

[...] If he was honest, he didn’t even know that Rachel would ever date again, so disgusted was she by the confines of marriage, so ruined had she been by the compromises of another person trying to have an equal say or even just an opinion in her life.

He hadn’t looked at another woman once during his marriage, so in love with Rachel was he—so in love was he with any kind of institution or system. He made solemn, dutiful work of trying to save the relationship even after it would have been clear to any reasonable person that their misery was not …