Try Less

"You try too hard," she said.

"Is that a thing?" Eric asked.

"You're 120% and everyone else is seventy or maybe eighty percent on a good day."

He sat there, eyes on the veins surfacing on his hands, mind on the way things had gone. The rejection he felt.

"Yeah. You can't recover from failure for one. But also that kind of effort scares people."

"I scare people?"

"I'd say so, yes." She downed a shot of tequila and grimaced.

"So try less?"