Page 19 of Thank you, Next
Will had never been tempted to shake someone so much.
“Maybe it’s because you’re not nice to them?”
Alex scowled at him. “What’s with men? Expecting women to be nice to them. Women are brought up to expect no one being nice to them—maybe ever.”
“That’s kind of a generalization, don’t you think?”
Then she crossed her arms over her chest and he knew he was about to get the business. He secretly kind of loved the business when it came from Alex. He should probably take a look at that, but he was going to enjoy it first.
“Little girls are taught that little boys are mean to them because they like them—”
“That was never the problem with you and me. I never liked you.”
“Shut up.” She held up a hand. “You were not a little boy when we met. You were a teen boy. And teen girls are taught that cishet teen boys are the monsters in the bushes, because they are.” She paused for a moment. “Present company excluded.”
There she was with the thing again, but she was not going to be deterred. “We’re not even taught to expect that other girls will be nice to us because we have to be mean to each other to establish supremacy so that the monsters in the bushes will be nice when they’re trying to use us to establish supremacy. And we’re not even getting to the part where I talk about what little girls who aren’t white are taught to expect.”
Will didn’t know what to say so he made a soft noise in the back of his throat. He hated the idea of anyone being mean to Alex—except for him. And that was always because she said something bitchy or called him dumb for getting married. But he would never put that into actual words. It would shift the dynamic between them irrevocably.
Luckily, Alex didn’t seem to notice that he hadn’t actually said anything. “It’s fine. All of this shit—race, gender, class—all of it is a social construct. We literally made it all up. Of course, it has significance in almost every aspect of our lives. But remembering that it’s all just a story that we tell ourselves about who we are is a good way to stay sane.”
“Then why do you care if every guy you’ve ever dated gets serious with someone else after they date you?” The Alex he knew would never have cared about why someone didn’t want to be in her life anymore. One of the many things he admired about her was her ability to just move on.
She looked at him, blinking a few times, as though she couldn’t believe he’d put together that many words about feelings. “Because it has significance, Will. It’s not important, but it also is.”
Will turned over that thought in his mind for a few moments. “I have no idea what that means.”
But just because he didn’t know what it meant, that didn’t mean he was going to let her confront all her exes. At least not alone.
NINE
How did you get all of this information so fast?” Jane had really come through with her research skills. Alex was now in possession of the addresses, home values, and current marital status—and a few criminal records—of every person she’d dated since her sophomore year in college. “I didn’t really need all this information. I’m only going to talk to, like, five of them.”
Jane shrugged. “I’m still dating the fuckboy, so my assistant had some time on their schedule this week.”
“You do realize that this is the stuff that exposés about bad bosses are made of, right?” Alex knew her friend was ride or die, but she didn’t want to read about how she’d had her assistants spying on her friends’ exes when they should be trying to develop their careers.
“If I get in trouble, you’ll get me out of it. I have faith in you.” That made Alex feel good about their friendship.
“You do realize that I can’t represent you in a civil suit.”
“My assistants don’t know that.” It was a real sign of Jane’s power that she had two assistants—like Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. “Why do you think I can get away for lunch so often? And no one interrupts us? They just think you’re my lawyer and I need to meet with you once a week.”
“And the fact that you return to the office two martinis deep?”
“They think that you’re giving me bad news.”
Jane had gotten away from the office and her very detailed assistant today so that they could track down the first ex on the list. Jane had called her and told her which exes she was willing to visit with her based on neighborhood and traffic patterns. There was no way that Jane was going to get on the 405 to visit any exes who lived in Long Beach or Hermosa Beach, but she hadn’t gotten to drive her new car on the PCH. Brody lived in Malibu, so they’d decided to crank up the soundtrack to The O.C. and make it a beach day.
On the way, they were picking up Lana, who said that she wouldn’t miss this fucking disaster for the world—and had saved a very special edible for the occasion.
Jane pulled up to the Venice bungalow Lana shared with her husband and three kids. Truly a great house that Lana and Greg had painstakingly restored. It would be a real shame if they ever got divorced. Alex would have to take the house away from Greg—a genuinely nice guy. And Alex would lose the one-tenth of one percent of her that still believed in true love.
Lana walked out of her house, looking like she’d just left the set of a Nancy Meyers movie—sort of like a young Meryl Streep with giant tatas and a smile that only legal pot and a reliable nanny could put on a mother’s face.
“Your boobs look amazing.” Jane never said anything but the truth. “Like we need to get some pictures of them for your future Raya profile.”
“One hundred percent,” Alex agreed. “Your body is rocking.”