Keys, check. Wallet, that too. Phone, fully charged, or close enough. Route planned — the 18 bus towards UCLA. I’d spent a few minutes flicking through the menu, deciding on some meatless meatballs and lavash bread, though I was quite aware that I might be too nervous to eat much. Maybe some bone broth instead? From my closet, I’d pulled a pine green surplice top and a pair of dark wash jeans to wear with a pair of old Chucks. Pitch it so you look casual but of the place, I thought.

On went the Victorian filigree locket, which I’d kept in spite of its provenance as the Christmas present I’d had from Josh. I’d set my hair with hot rollers and sprayed its gentle waves with a lavish application of Elnett. BB cream, a tightline of eyeliner (upper lash line only), one coat of mascara; one gentle sweep of a solid taupe on my lids. A smudge of raspberry red on my lips, blotted and blotted down to a soft blur of color. I don’t care how I look, I hope it said, but don’t I look beautiful?

I checked my phone again. Lunch in Brentwood? she’d texted me.

Why Brentwood, I’d replied. I’d expected happy hour somewhere like SUR — somewhere a little gaudy, a little naff, somewhere she’d be able to tag in an Instagram post of a glowing pink cocktail for her 262 followers to coo over. “Lucky u!” “did u see LVP?”

“U don’t have a car & SM too public,” she pinged back. “Kreation at 2:30?”

She was right — whatever was going to come out of this meeting needed to be done free from the chance that Jenn might breeze in for a late lunch of poached salmon and roasted broccolini or an after-work, gin-laced wind down. If she saw us together, she’d assume I’d taken a side, and not the one she wanted. Jenn’s not constitutionally inclined towards assuming the best when there’s a whiff in the air of chicanery. Which just goes to show how good a liar I’ve been when it comes to Josh over the years.

Kreation it was. At worst, it would be a prickly meeting, laced with awkward pauses and answers she couldn’t quite give voice to. At best, I hoped, I might help unstick the clog in three lives, more than three lives, perhaps.

The bus hummed past smart little Montana Avenue boutiques and salons and ateliers and restaurants. I could have been any one of the toned, bored housewives I watched wend in and out of the storefronts, buzzing the shops like tawny bumblebees sipping nectar from their depths. Julian would have blanched had he known I was taking a bus, of all things; certainly none of these honeys would have.

I’d spoken to him only the night before, asking for that editor’s number at Macmillan again; I’d misplaced it in the move. I dissembled a little, said I might be be riding my bike to Brentwood to explore further than the square mile around the apartment. “For the exercise,” I’d insisted. No point in telling him who I was meeting or why when I knew what he’d say — “Birds of a feather, two of a kind. She should be an object lesson to you — didn’t Minty say Alex would take her back if she asked him?”

“Why don’t you get yourself a car?” he’d sighed. “I thought you were getting a Tesla. What are you doing with my money, anyway?” (Hardly your business, I thought, but even now don’t dare say.) “Or for that matter, why doesn’t he get himself a car you can borrow? He has the money. He’s lying to you if he says he’s skint. He’s not.”

Maybe I don’t want a car now, I’d countered. Maybe I prefer to immerse myself in the place — my gaze focused on the very where of it all, the German tourists on scooters and the beach bunnies on skateboards and the swards of green on the cliffs, the peachy sunset light on the great dark sea, the funnel cakes and the dank and earthy funk of palm fronds blown down by a windstorm.

“Too romantic for your own good, Mel,” Jules sniffed. “Santa Monica’s full of filthy, violent rough sleepers who’ll shit on your doorstep. You let him run roughshod over you by moving to that neighborhood just because he said he’d like to walk to work. If he actually cares about his woman as much as he claimed when he was assaulting me, he’d put your safety paramount above his little strolls.”

I started to remind him that he wasn’t the one who’d tasted blood that night, but held my tongue. Amanda had spun Julian’s injuries — a bump on the head, the ignominy of being shoved and slapped — into “the type of attack that should have landed Alex in Wormwood Scrubs” but Jules wasn’t the one left pressing a starched cornflower blue napkin to his mouth to stanch the blood that streamed there. Still, Julian had his purpose as an occasional ally, if one whose motives were frequently mixed, and the protest on my lips died more promptly than my marriage did.

Twee boutiques and smart aestheticians and pilates studios gave way to dowdy mid-century apartment blocks and low-slung ranches that despite their humble dimensions were easily worth more than a million bucks. As the 18 inched closer to the Los Angeles city line, the homes blossomed into handsome two-story brick houses and villas, or at least what I could see of them behind towering, pristinely-maintained hedges. I’d never wanted to live so sheltered from the road, unable to see the daily tread of humanity before my door. The door to my shabby, pre-marital apartment in Pasadena opened barely 10 feet from the cracked pavement of Raymond Avenue. The only shrubbery at our old home in Pasadena had been the six azalea bushes flanking the front steps, purely decorative. And while my dainty fairy house of a studio in West Berkeley was otherwise ideal for me, tucked away in Steve’s back garden I could see nothing of my neighbors on 10th Street.

The bus veered sharply to the left, then swooped around the gentle curve of the road shaped to accommodate the lush greens of a golf course. Since I’d agreed to lunch, or juices, or whatever this was, I’d been trying to formulate a script I could stick to. Something true(ish), something that sounded a little sage, or at least that I had some better advice than, this needs to end. Which of course was what I wanted to say, but my lunch date was going to need a little more finessing if she were to agree with me. While I’d written her off as featherlight, grasping, preening, vulgar, those had been adjectives used by others to write me off as easy prey. This needed a certain polish in its strategy. While I wasn’t sure I could achieve it, the crack in the wall I’d need to break down not already existed, it must be spreading if she was reaching out in the first place.

I might have mentioned it before, but I’m usually prompt, early even. I wasn’t always like this, though. Josh had thought I was another soul fussy about time when I’d come down several minutes early for our first date. It wasn’t the case at all — I’d been too nervous to spend much more time alone ruminating about why he’d singled me out for a date. I’d never been horrendously late as a child — that was very much Rachel’s stock in trade — but ten or fifteen minutes here or there was essentially meaningless to me. As a child, one thinks of oneself as the bright star around which all other planets and moons revolve, anyway. It was a small way for a small child to mount a rebellion within a family — you are in my orbit, your pull is towards me — but like every other disobedience of mine, it was overlooked or indulged. No one is watching me, a thought that pulsed through me regularly.

For my mother, my regular, almost meaningless lateness was amusing, even a bit precious. “It’s called being fashionably late, dahling,” she’d say to my dad in what I learned was an impression of Zsa Zsa Gabor. “Mel’s our little fashionista.”

“Rachel must be into haute couture then,” my dad would say in response, nearly every time. “Why be ten minutes late when you can be two hours?”

This was actually true, and an event Dad still trots out for display regularly. Rachel had been allowed to make her own way to a Christmas party at the Fujimas’ — she’d been hanging out with the proto-Glam Squad (the full assemblage would not form until high school) at the mall that afternoon, probably shoplifting from the Limited and Victoria’s Secret. I’d begged Rachel to show up, since I was trying to get the attention of Mike Ruiz and the only way Mike was going to even look at me was if my sister was standing nearby. (At 14, Rachel already had a rack where I was practically concave, even if I did wear a bralette I was trying to coax even the suggestion of breasts into.)

The $20 I’d paid her as a bribe wasn’t enough to get her through the Fujimas’ front door before 8:30 pm, smelling suspiciously (to me at least) like she’d bathed in a vat of Body Shop White Musk, which she pretty much had in an attempt to mask the vodka on her breath. My parents either elected to ignore the alcohol, or really were that clueless when it came to my sister’s borderline juvenile delinquent behavior. Worst of all, Mike Ruiz was long gone by the time she tripped over someone’s shrieking toddler and directly into the arms of Mr. Denning, my recently divorced English teacher. (Horrible on every account.)

I’d learned promptness through exposure to my twin stars of love through discipline — Julian and Josh. Both were punctilious about so many things (Josh to an even greater extent than Jules), from grooming to what they presumed was chivalry in manners to timeliness. Earliness.

“It’s a mark of respect for others and yourself,” Josh would remind me, when I’d shuffle in late again for a lit mag meeting. “Stop giving other people the excuse to judge you even more.”

“Good god, Mel,” Julian would whinge as I fussed with the clasp on a ruby bracelet or rifled through my dressing room for a pair of pumps for a night at the opera or a charity dinner. “It’s not like you have anything to do that’s stopping you from being ready to leave on time.”

By the time I recognized I was in love with Alex, my days of poor time management had been shed like yet another of the skins I’d learned were inconvenient for the men I’d loved. For this journey, I’d checked and rechecked the timetable for the 18 on Google Maps and the Big Blue Bus website. Who can trust a bus schedule in LA? I’d decided. Traffic and roadworks and cyclists can cause delays that make such timetables merely suggestions, not commandments. Best to build in some extra cushion. If I’m early, I’ll have a macchiato or a cold pressed juice.

The first half hour I passed on my own was completely of my own device — how was I to know the bus would run on time? I sipped slowly on a cinnamon-scented matcha latte, trying to figure out why there was a huge and ragged chunk of rose quartz on the waxed pine tabletop. “To encourage good vibes,” the shaggy-haired waiter informed me. “It’s supposed to help you open your heart, share the goodness within. You know, like love and friendship. All the cool stuff.”

Huh. Considering what I was about to do, the rose quartz might fall under the rubric of “can’t hurt, could help.” I stroked its craggy surface absently while I browsed dresses for my eventual wedding on the Saks website for inspiration. I didn’t want a traditional bridal gown, whenever I finally decided to turn off the spigot of marital support still pouring into my bank account from Julian’s. But by the time I sipped the last of my tepid latte, it was nearly 3 and my lunch (if 3 could be called lunch) date hadn’t scuttled through the doors yet in a cloud of Kat Von D Sinner. Her text was clear — I’d checked it five times already — that it was the Brentwood Kreation, not any of the others.

As I scrolled through the live updates from the Senate floor about the close of the impeachment trial, a text pinged in. Sorry traffic from Pasadena bad, go ahead get a glass without me, uber will be there in thirty

“A glass”? I flipped through the pages of the menu filled with chlorophyll water and syringe shots of oregano oil and pineapple and so, so much turmeric. A “glass” implied alcohol, surely, unless she meant a glass of something called “Poop Enforcer” (lots of senna and alkaline water). I’d been eavesdropping intermittently on the conversation behind me, two young women discussing the relative merits of several nearby waxing studios (“I feel you about Alice, and I love her accent, but Lyudmila just gets every last hair. It’s like a skinless chicken breast down there when she’s done” — a powerful, if somewhat disgusting, endorsement). Curiosity got the better of me and as I turned around to see what the woman with the chicken breast pudendum looked like, Shaggy the Waiter loped into sight, a small brown menu in his hand.

“Gratitude Hour starts now, if you’re interested,” he said, passing the card to me.

“‘Gratitude Hour’? I’m sorry, what?” It’s not like growing up in Burbank I’d been immune from the woo of orgone pendants and moon goddess ceremonies and color therapy (though never in my home — my exceedingly rational mother delights in ripping apart pseudoscientific malarkey). But the land west of Fairfax is particularly blessed with this type of lunacy, perhaps bested only by Topanga Canyon.

Shags favored me with a lopsided grin and a condescending head tilt, like he was speaking to a particularly slow but beloved child. “It’s what we call happy hour. Because being grateful is opening yourself out to the world and sharing your happiness.”

Good lord. “And does being grateful include space for, you know, some wine?” I am familiar enough with LA to know that it’s completely within the realm of possibility for a purveyor of fine woo to fashion a happy — sorry, gratitude — hour focused on cumin and cold-pressed radishes, without a nod to alcohol.

“Absolutely, but we have some fabulous cocktails. You should try the Flakita.” He tucked a long wavy lock of sun-bleached hair behind his ear before pointing to the menu. “It’s, like, basically an amped-up Master Cleanse with some sake.”

I tried to imagine Alex maintaining his composure in the face of that description and failed miserably. My own involuntary bark of laughter stopped just before my trachea and emerged as a half-snort I snuffled into my hand, followed by a fake cough. “Sorry, allergies. I’ll have a glass of that pinot grigio instead.”

“Are you sure? Because if allergies are bothering you, the Master Cleanse might help.” His sincere concern for my physical and spiritual well-being was almost endearing, but ultimately, you know, it was too much woo. Still, he brought me the wine after I assured him that these allergies were the type that responded better to grape therapy than cayenne.

The wine unspooled the tight winding of my thoughts around the bobbin of the problem I’d been carrying in my pocket for months. Number one, Mel, this isn’t your problem, I reminded myself. Even if you’re of this, you’re not in this. Number two, acknowledge that all you can do is encourage her. She’s not your friend, even if you’re friendly. And three… maybe a second glass wouldn’t be a bad idea. Shags brought two more glasses, one for me and one for my “date,” as he put it.

“Not a date,” I stressed as he placed the glasses in front of me with a slight fussiness about how they lined up with the grain in the pine-topped table. “She’s a… friend of a friend.” (Sort of true.) “It’s just traffic.” I held up my phone to show him her latest text, as if to prove I’m neither the type of woman who gets stood up for an afternoon date at a juicery, nor the type who came to drink three glasses of wine on an empty stomach in public because she’s lonely, and is using the excuse of a missing “friend” to cover for that third glass.

I was feeling deliciously mellow by the second sip of glass two, like I was looking through an amber-tinted fisheye lens, an image melty on the edges. The chicken breast woman and her companion had moved on to discussing music, and in particular whether JLo and Shakira had any “cultural heft” any longer, even if their bodies looked amazing during the Super Bowl halftime show. “I think I can name, like, one Shakira song,” the other woman told Chicken Breast. “And she played it. Half the time I get JLo mixed up with Mariah Carey, but Mariah at least has that great Christmas song that always makes me cry. Because of Love, Actually.”

“Totally agree,” Chicken Breast drawled. “Anyway, I’m more into lo-fi Russian bedroom synth these days.”

I was about to turn around and ask Chicken Breast if she’d heard any Parks, Squares & Alleys when an unmistakable, musty-musky tang of Sinner curled beneath my nose. My lunch date slid breathlessly into the booth, carefully placing her red Gucci purse on the table beside her, as if setting up a sacred objet for our veneration.

“I am so, so, so, sorry, Mel,” Kayla panted. “The 101. And then the 405. Friday.”

“It’s fine,” I assured her. Fine only because I’m well over a glass into drinking my way into this shitshow, I added to myself. “I got you a glass of pinot grigio.”

“Ooooh, thanks. Ugh, I need it. Cheers!” She reached across the table and clinked her glass on mine, though I hadn’t extended it for any toast.

To a casual observer, one with a less-trained eye, Kayla and I might be another pair of lightly-employedish women like Chicken Breast and her friend, ordering buffalo-sauced roasted cauliflower and jicama street tacos, comparing the relative merits of English and Estonian bikini waxers and whether Filipinas or Salvadoreñas made better housekeepers. I’d affected the low-key chic of discreet luxury — women who knew something about fashion might recognize the designers, but possibly not. My bag didn’t scream its label, but I knew it cost as much as Kayla’s last-season cross-body. Kayla was in designer athleisure, but it was all Burberry check under an oversized red cocoon sweater. (Trying too hard.) She’d dyed away the terrible bayalage I’d seen her in during the past summer, but the new color — a rose gold that I’d seen on Kylie Jenner in some dreadful celebrity mag in my GP’s waiting room last year — didn’t suit her skin tone. Kayla desperately needed a stylist, or some a close friend to help her develop restraint, but from the likes she gets on her Instagram posts for some of her gauchest ensembles, neither of these options were likely to happen soon.

From her cardigan pocket she withdrew a metal straw and plinked it in her pinot grigio. “It’s my part in saving the environment,” she explained before taking a long pull on her drink. “Plus some places think it’s weird to use a straw with wine but whatever, Mack agrees I should just do what I want.” She widened her chocolate brown eyes and crossed them slightly as she focused on nearly emptying the glass.

None of us had ever liked Kayla, though I had tolerated her more than the Jen(n)s or Caitlin. Even though her taste is appalling, she carried on having an affair with our best friend’s husband for months after she found out he was married, and she apparently drinks wine through a metal straw at restaurants (this seems like acceptable at-home drinking behavior to me, though), I know too well the feeling of being an interloper in a tight group of friends, some of whom detested me for being tasteless and attracted to a particular man. (Or men, to be honest.) But I’d had Minty on my side from nearly the start, and her bona fides for my status as a “good egg” were enough to gain me admittance by most of that lot. Kayla had only Sean as a true champion, and he’d been living in Seattle most of the time Mack and Kayla had been together.

“Give her a chance, Little Em,” Sean had begged me when I had refused to come to her bridal shower out of solidarity. “She’s a lot of fun. She reminds me a little of your friend Jamie’s girlfriend, really up for just about anything. I mean, I love Jen, but it’s not like you’d ever find her grabbing her surfboard at dawn to go catch some waves in Malibu.” Strong-armed by my best friend, I showed up for a painful hour at Kayla’s sister’s house in West Covina, where I knew absolutely no one except the bride-to-be, who was more interested in drinking frozen daiquiris through penis straws with her sorority sisters. (Clearly the alcohol/straw thing is dear to her heart.) I spent most of the time surreptitiously Periscoping the event for Jenn and Caitlin, and cuddling on a rattan papasan chair with a geriatric cocker spaniel named Cappy who smelled of Fritos.

While I was thinking of all the tiny russet dog hairs that had woven their way into the sweater I was wearing that day, Kayla was busy flagging down Shaggy to order some more wine and a platter of chicken meatballs. “He’s cute,” she confided in me as he strutted away towards the kitchen. “Nice ass.”

I couldn’t disagree — Shags did have a nice ass, high and slightly rounded in his skinny jeans. To be honest, it was nicer than Alex’s, which was a shameful thought, even if it was true. Al’s got what he refers to as “one arse cheek’s worth spread over two” and while there’s not much to complain about the sweet peach halves he does have, there’s just not much, period. Even worse, I thought of Julian’s rear end, another firm, callipygian delight. I downed some of the chlorophyll water Kayla had ordered in an attempt to cool off. Thinking of Julian’s body was not helping me maintain the requisite level of sangfroid to handle this meeting.

I shook the image of Julian’s bare bottom in the shower from my consciousness with a shudder. “So, why am I here?” I asked. “Why are we here?”

She tied her pinky-gold hair into a topknot and secured it with another metal straw, this one pulled from her gaudy Gucci purse. “I need some advice, and, well, you’re kind of the only person who will speak to me.” I couldn’t stop staring at the plain silver heart necklace she was wearing — it was the one Mack had given to Jen their last Christmas together. She’d torn it off and thrown it at his head during a horrendous dinner party Jenn was hosting to cheer me up (i.e., put some real food in my ever-shrinking body). Mack had been clueless enough, it seems, to scoop it up and present it to Wife No. 2.

“Shoot,” I mumbled through a bite of chicken meatball.

I let Kayla have the floor while I worked my way through some sprouted hummus and baba ghanouj. It wasn’t a story that was particularly flattering to any of the three main players. Once Mack had confessed to Kayla about his summer “power aerobics” with Jen, she’d done what to me sounded like the only sensible move any of the players in this tale made: she kicked him out and had her sister move in with her for a week. “All I wanted to do was cry and drink, and it seemed less pathetic to do that alone,” she told me. (Having followed that path on my own without support, I can’t disagree that having a grief buddy is a good idea.)

In that first week, Mack had holed up in the Westin, according to their credit card statement. He didn’t call home, didn’t text Kayla unless it was to respond to a message. “I wanted him to tell me at least that he’d made a mistake, you know? Or say I had it all wrong, or that he was leaving me, or that I should leave him. But he didn’t say anything, except that he was still at the Westin, or that he loved me if I said I loved him, too. If I called him, he’d pick up and listen to me cry and scream at him for wasting my life, and all he could say is stuff like, ‘I love you and I’m sorry.’ Didn’t tell me he’d leave her, didn’t tell me we were over. It was like…” She searched for a word, and I knew which one it was.

“Stasis,” I suggested before snaffling another cauliflower bite.

“Sure.” Her second glass of wine was disappearing almost as quickly as her first. “I mean, obviously you know him better than I do, but I realized for the first time that I really hate the fact that he doesn’t make up his mind about anything. Anything! Like, I’d say, let’s go out for lunch, and he’d say fine, you choose. Or let’s see a movie — fine, you choose. It was always my choice. I thought it was super cute, or empowering, or whatever. But now all I see is that he won’t make any choice at all. And I’m sick of it.”

I flagged down Shaggy and ordered some Lavachos (I felt dumb even saying the word, but nachos made on lavash bread sounded even more delicious than when I’d been sober an hour and a half before). Outside, Range Rovers and Audis slowly chugged down San Vicente, ferrying their wealthy, indolent owners towards home, or the gym, or a reiki session. The broad median slicing through the wide street was impossibly green for this time of year, reminding me that the rich can have whatever they want, whenever they want.

Kayla was now loose enough from the wine to fill in some of the detail on what had been the broad sketch of the marriage mess she’d been sending me DMs on Instagram about since the end of last year. After showing up at the Westin unannounced to find Mack and Jen nestled side by side on a hideous avocado green couch in the dining courtyard, feeding each other ahi poke, Kayla had two epiphanies. One, she wanted Mack home, if he’d come home. And two, he loved Jen and Kayla couldn’t make that change.

“So I went home and started Googling things like, ‘What to do when he loves you and someone else’ and ‘he loves two women can this work.'” She shoved one of the Lavachos between her bubblegum pink lips, dropping short rib and pico de gallo on the table top as the helping made its way to her mouth. My offer of a napkin was rebuffed. The morsels went right in her mouth; she smacked her lips noisily. “And that’s when I found out about an open marriage.”

“You mentioned,” I mumbled.

Kayla had mentioned it last year, and I’d thought about meeting her to dissuade her from such a plan, but I’d passed. Well, it’s more accurate to say I was prevented — Jenn saw the texts that had passed between Kayla and me and put her foot down. “Open marriage?” Jenn had shrieked when I’d come back from the bathroom to find her snooping in my phone. “No. No! Mack stays with Kayla and Jen moves on. It’s non-negotiable as far as I’m concerned.”

(Not that Jenn’s concern really means much.)

“Yeah!” she burbled. “I read a lot of Dan Savage and I went down some very freaky rabbit holes and learned all this stuff about ethical sluts and stuff. And I thought, maybe this way I could have my husband and he could have what he wants, too.” She tucked a rose gold lock back up into the bun she’d fashioned on the fly. “And when he came home to drop off his laundry–“

“Wait, you were doing his laundry?” This sounded precisely like the sort of thing I would have done for Julian, but I’d never had the opportunity to prostrate myself in this particular fashion before him.

Kayla gave a little shrug and tugged some more wine through her straw. “Cheaper than doing it at the hotel. And some of it was Jen’s. Anyway, while we were in the utility room and I was pouring Tide in the machine, I asked him if he wanted to open up our marriage. He didn’t know what I was talking about, so I gave him my highlighted copy of The Ethical Slut and said he should read some of it while I did the laundry. By the time I’d finished folding his socks, he agreed with me it was the only solution.”

Now this did not sound like the Jeffrey Mackenzie I’d known for 30 years. Mack doesn’t deal in absolutes like “only” or “never” or “always” — Mack paints the world in graded shades, not primary colors, nor black and white. “Should’ve been a lawyer,” my dad said, “because every other word out of that kid’s mouth is, ‘it depends.'” (I reminded him that was two words, but he ignored me.)

I scoffed a little, but Kayla insisted Mack was bought in. “I explained that this way, he could live at home with me, and he could still see Jen. And I asked him if I could see other men, too, because it’s important for these things to be a two way street, right?” She flagged down Shaggy, pointing at her glass and mine and raising two fingers. “You don’t have anything else planned this afternoon, do you?”

I mean, strictly speaking, I didn’t beyond a semi-planned drift through the Nordstrom shoe section and perhaps a peek in at the Peloton store (totally gross commercial, but Rachel swears that it’s been helping Matt get in shape). From the corner of my eye, I noticed Chicken Breast and her buddy doing some “who me I’m not listening to your shitshow” kabuki posturing. They picked up their conversation only when I caught the buddy’s side-glance and gave her a glare.

“So are you seeing anyone else?” I said through another bite of baba ghanouj and lavash, which were doing a fairly decent job of soaking up the pinot grigio.

“HA!” Kayla brayed, and I looked over my shoulder to see Chicken Breast rapt with fascination, a meatball poised on her fork en route to her mouth. “Of course not. I only said it because, well, because the books and the internet said I should at the very least raise it with him. And of course Mack said fine, because it’s Mack.”

“Of course.” Kayla could have told him she had been cheating on him throughout the marriage, and Mack probably would have shrugged and said, “If that’s what you want.”

“Can I be honest with you, Mel?” She’d dropped her voice, and flashed her gaze around, spotting Chicken Breast and her guest at last. The stormy, flinty squint she affected finally shamed the two into resuming at least a semblance of a normal conversation. “As I was saying, hm. Well, I don’t actually want Mack anymore, but I don’t want to lose. Does that sound weird? It’s like, I’m kind of over him. Like it was some fun that got way too serious, and now I’ve got this… man who has no fight in him. I could tell him I want to fuck him on the kitchen table, and he’d say fine. I could tell him I never want to have sex with him again, and he’d say fine. I don’t have any idea what he wants, and I’m not even sure he does either.”

“He wants Jen.” The wretched, nasty truth fell out of my wine-liberated mouth before I could keep it crammed in. I expected Kayla to show some emotion beyond the brief nod she gave, loosening another lock of rosy hair from her messy bun. “Is this what you really want? Don’t you think you deserve more?” At last — the words I’d come to say had a place in the conversation.

With that, the cool girl, don’t-give-a-fuck, watch me slam a tequila while I look fierce in this crotch-skimming dress affect sagged enough for me to see the woman, the wounded woman, she was. She was sick of Mack’s bullshit and yet she could not let go. She’d let him have whatever he wanted as long as she didn’t have to cave to the defeat of divorce.

It was a sentiment not unfamiliar to me — by the time Alex and I met in Suffolk and had that longed-for kiss in the garden, I wanted the passionless sex with Julian to be done. I didn’t want to see his face beside me in the mornings, didn’t want to spend the time dressing to please his tastes, or to choose our weekly menus in any spirit more than listless routine. I didn’t care about pleasing him, not in the way I used to delight in achieving, not in the way that uncorked his honest appreciation and not a small amount of awe. By the time Alex was holding me close, sheltered from view by Annabelle’s cobalt blue shed, I knew only that I could not mime my way through my marriage anymore, but the prospect of leaving, of failing, was even worse, perhaps. (It really wasn’t, something I have only recently allowed myself to accept as true.)

Kayla didn’t respond at first, merely rubbed at the dew left on the table by her sweating wine glass. “I might,” she eventually murmured before clearing her throat. “I probably do. Don’t I?” she asked, never looking up from where she was drawing loops on the table’s surface with her finger.

She did; of that I was certain, even with her terrible Burberry crop top and brown-rooted pink hair and label obsession and metal straws in her hair and in her wine. Kayla was as deserving of her very own Alex as I am — a man who is paying attention to her, who hears her and listens to her and concocts moments of desire and pleasure and fancy and indulgence just for her. A man who would use his every resource to push any obstacle from her path, if she chose to accept his help (Alex still assumes I’ll accept it, and I still assume I should take it, I will add). We should not accept something or someone passable in the long term — it’s a short term bodge, something to bridge crises and scrapes and quagmires. We should not live in the in-between nor dwell in the margins of our beloved’s life. And yes, I say this as a woman possessed of nearly every privilege given to our gender in this country — white and middle class and educated and rich and more than passably pretty (I must be honest here). I have the space to want more, and I should take it. So should Kayla, even if she hasn’t captured every facet of nearly complete female privilege as I have.

And then, a flash of recognition — I saw someone else in her misery, someone not me, though very much once mine. Before I thought better of it, I pounced. “You do. You really do. And I know exactly the person you should speak with about this. About breaking away when it’s not working right. He’s been… well, not in exactly the same place as you, but he might convince you that it’s nowhere near enough for you.”

As I tapped out the number I knew nearly as well as my own in a text for Kayla, Chicken Breast wafted past our table on her way back from the ladies in a billow of Tom Ford Fucking Fabulous (not my thing), but stopped before she rejoined her friend. “I just wanted to say,” Chicken Breast exclaimed a little too loud (must have been the Flakitas she’d been drinking) to Kayla, “your friend is right. You deserve more than some piece of shit who won’t stand up for himself and says he’s in an open marriage when he’s really just cheating on you.”

More heads swiveled our way, but Kayla appeared to enjoy the spotlight, letting down her hair from its bobble and shaking it out slightly. “Did I mention his sidepiece is his EX-WIFE who divorced him when she found out he was cheating on her with me?” It almost sounded like a boast. It probably was.

Chicken Breast’s fuschia-glossed lips parted to give a glimpse of the Invisalign device on her upper teeth. “You have to be shitting me.”

While Kayla got cozy with Chicken Breast (real name: CeeCee, apparently), I sent a text to Kayla’s should-be breakup counselor. Promise me you have fifteen minutes later to speak with someone who really could do with your advice. Advice on how to end a marriage when the other spouse is cheating but won’t let go.

Within a minute, a long minute while Kayla, CeeCee and Danay (Danae? Dané? Chicken Breast’s buddy) discussed the relative merits of staying with a man who funds your shopping habit and only has sex with you when you ask for it (which is rarely) but lives half the time in a Westin with his ex-wife, a reply pinged in, then another.

Promise me it’s you who needs the advice on how to end it with your brute 🙂

Sorry. Yes I can help. After all you taught me everything I know about ending a beautiful marriage spoiled by an affair.

As I mentioned, Julian can still be a useful ally at times. Quite useful.