“ This isn’t Soviet Russia. This is America we’re talking about. For God’s sake, this is New York City. ”
I couldn't understand; cheating was the one thing I'd told her all those years ago would be unforgivable. She knew, she said, but that was part of what had been confusing her, that I would even have told her that, as if she weren't an actual human being with the freedom to act, but some character in a scenario in my head. There was a quality I had of making the people closest to me feel lonely, somehow. Some essential cold withholding at the core of myself.
~ Garth Risk Hallberg
One day, he and William had been speeding toward each other; the next, careening away. But why?
As if it were possible for one person to care about another and still treat him or her like this.
But what if time worked the other way around?What if what his adolescent self had felt then was the ghost of his present one, sitting here on a sagging bench, beckoning him into his future?