"What if you were a girl?" Monica asked.

Martin blinked. "But I'm not."

"You could be," she insisted. "I mean not literally. Don't go having a surgery or something, that would be creepy. But if we just pretended you were a girl then I wouldn't have to hate you right? And it would be okay if I wanted to do things with you sometime, because it wouldn't be like I'd stopped hating men or anything."

"You could always kick me in the shins and call me nasty names," he volunteered. "I've heard that's a good thing to do to people you don't like."

She turned and smiled at him. Leaning against him she sighed. "Don't listen to me, I'm being stupid again. I don't hate you Martin. I don't really hate men. I think."

He was running out of things to say and didn't know how long this little protective bubble surrounding them would last before it simply popped and turned back into the scary world outside their doorstep.

"I just hate me," she whispered.

He pushed her shoulders back so he could see her face. "Monica!"

"What?"

"Don't say that." He shook his head. "Please don't say that."

"I don't know what else you want me to say. I'm so selfish. You've went through so much and I'm the one always being a whiny bitch and complaining and making your life miserable."

"Stop, stop." He pressed a hand across her mouth and she fell silent, but that distant look seemed to creepy back into her eyes.

"Let's just lay here until we fall asleep," he told her. He closed