Summary

With Noah in her life, at least in her virtual life, the narrator rediscovers sex itself as a trashy game. With Noah touring, their sexting becomes a heady diversion. “Part of what was between us was a conspiratorial acknowledgement that we were gross, that we were perverts, that it was nastiness bonding us together” (234). When Noah stops briefly in London, the narrator is quick to join him, telling Ciaran an elaborate lie involving her girlfriends and a weekend getaway. She delights in the sheer physical reality of their relationship, the anticipation, the need to “have sex with a man I want so much I could faint” (236). They make love carelessly, publicly, the narrator walking about with Noah’s “warm drool unfurling between [her] legs” (238). Unlike the cool of the controlling Ciaran, Noah’s warmth was “stunning,” a “sensory overload” (249). He is a...