passage of the day

"He thought now how it had always been for him, ever since he was a boy sitting on the edge of a chair in the living room listening to his parents' friends -- a divorced woman whose hands shook slightly in her lap as she told him with great excitement about the vacation she was to take, or the man whose son Frank saw teased relentlessly at school, talking of how happy his boy was -- the unsaid visible in their gestures, filling the air around them, pressing on Frank. And later in college, at a party, drink in hand, standing by a bookcase, chatting with a slightly heavy girl hanging back from the crowd, tracked into every shift of her eyes, every tense little smile, as if the nerves in her body were the nerves in his, her every attempt to disguise her awkwardness raising its pitch in him."

"The Good Doctor," from You Are Not a Stranger Here -- Adam Haslett