She made a sarcastic comment about Nate's "artfully crafted sentences," which, she said, mimicked true feeling without knowing what it was. He imitated the stylistic devices of writers he admired without realizing that for those writers these weren't mere devices but means of expressing something true.

Then Nate looked at her face and saw that she'd been crying. She had tried to cover it up. No, that wasn't quite right. She looked as if she'd made a halfhearted attempt to cover it up but what she really wanted was for him to know that she was upset and ask what was wrong.

At the park, he had thought Hannah was unreasonable when she accused him of not trying, but now he wondered if he had, at some point, stacked the deck against her - decided he didn't want her and then set things up so she'd justify his slackening interest. Because he knew - of course he knew, he wasn't stupid - that his behavior had contributd to, if not entirely caused, her insecurity. And of course her insecurity [...] just made her more annoying. But it had felt as if he couldn't help the way he behaved. [...]

[...] After a couple of months, he asked her, why him? [...] What she said was sweet, but Nate was still partly unsatisfied. IT felt exogenous to him, to the real him.