Susannah Nix

Like a kid who’d been shoved off his bike and had his lunch money stolen. She didn’t like feeling like a bully

“It’s not like love’s even real.”

“Sure it is.”

“No, gravity’s real. The laws of thermodynamics are real. You know how I know? Because I can measure them. I can make reliable predictions about how objects will behave under their influence. You can’t do that with love. It’s just a feeling. A temporary delusion caused by rising cortisol levels and depleted serotonin.”

“You say that like feelings don’t matter.”

“Maybe they shouldn’t matter as much as they do.”

“Now you’re talking crazy.”

If you never let yourself care about people, it didn’t hurt as much when they didn’t care back.

It was easier to not want things, because then you couldn’t be disappointed when you didn’t get them

She liked her friends and was willing to do almost anything for them, but she didn’t have an abundance of patience for everyone else in the world. Most people were an inconvenience she’d just as soon not have to deal with. She supposed it was possible she let that show a little too much in her attitude at work

This situation is outside my experience. I don’t feel qualified to have an opinion.”

“Cop-out,”

Why talk about your feelings when you could shove them all deep down inside? Keep calm and carry on. Like Queen Elizabeth.

But that didn’t mean she was unfeeling or cold. She showed people she cared through her actions. Wasn’t that better anyway? Showing rather than telling? That’s why she was always taking care of people.

Yes. You’ll bring down the wrath of the whatever with that kind of cockiness.”

. Hell is other people, indeed

There were so many things she could say, but she didn’t say any of them, because that would be handing the nuclear codes to an enemy agent. Self-assured destruction

It took her a moment to realize Adam was laughing. It sounded strange and dusty, like he hadn’t used it in a long time. Even he looked surprised by it, like he wasn’t used to the sound of his own laugh. Maybe it was that rare of an occurrence, like an eclipse or a leap year. Or even rarer, like a comet that only came around once every century.