Alissa Nutting

it had left Jack with a post-traumatic stress disorder that was heartily interfering with my getting off

Now that he was actually in front of me again, all the previous curiosities I’d entertained—that he and I might reunite in the harmonious arrangement of my needing money and Ford’s needing a stunning wife, or the romantic notion that his breakdown might fill me with a sense of victory—disappeared entirely; he was as annoying as ever and I simply wanted him gone.

a failed experiment on my behalf that would never cease to finish failing.