And part of Denise was thinking, as the tea went cold: Shit, she's really into me now. This part of her considered, as if it were an actual threat of harm, the exhausting circumstance: She wants sex every day. This same part of her was thinking also: My God, the way she eats. And: I am not a "lesbian."

At the same time, another part of her was literally awash in desire. She'd never seen so objectively what an illness sex was, what a collection of bodily symptoms, because she'd never been remotely as sick as Robin made her.