Infatuation

'Okay, forget dignity. I don't deserve deserve any. I fancy this woman, Marcus. I want to go out with her. I'd like her to be my girlfriend.'

Finally, Marcus swivelled his eyes away from the TV screen, and Will could see they were shining with fascination and pleasure.

'Really?'

'Yes, really.' Really, really. He had thought of almost nothing else since New Year's Eve (not that he had much to think about, apart from the word Rachel, a vauge recollection of lots of long dark hair and a lot of foolish fantasies involving picnics and babies and tearfully devoted mothers-in-law and huge hotel beds) and it was a relief to be able to bring Rachel out into the light, even though it was only Marcus who was up there to inspect her, and even though the words he had had to use did not, he felt, do her justice. He wanted Rachel to be his wife, his lover, the centre of his whole world; a girlfriend implied that he would see her from time to time, that she would have some kind of independent existence away from him, and he didn't want that at all.

-- Nick Hornby, About A Boy

[ 12 September 2004 9:56 pm submitted by Unknown ]