Page 20 of Thank you, Next
Lana got in the back seat of Jane’s Audi. Once she closed the door, she sighed. “You two are sure good for the ego of a woman who hasn’t gone to the bathroom alone in five years.”
Alex winced. Almost everything any person she respected said made parenthood seem mostly horrific. It would also require her making a long-term commitment to a partner. She definitely didn’t picture doing parenthood alone, like her mother had. Of course, her mother had had a village of sorts to help—namely, Lexi. But Alex couldn’t imagine doing the job of modern parenthood, which seemed to require a lot more than it had in, say, the seventies, all alone.
“We’re going to have so much fun today.” Jane ignored the comment about going to the bathroom alone. It had sometimes brought up some tension in their friendship that Jane had no interest in the existence of children. According to her, humans were a scourge on the planet, and we would all be better off if we stopped reproducing immediately. She tended to just lightly gloss over any mention of Lana’s children.
For the most part, Lana ignored it. But today, she couldn’t seem to pull it off. Perhaps it was the marked lack of a car seat or crumbs littering Jane’s back seat. “I really need to keep a hand vacuum in my car.”
“I like to keep it clean in case I need to get busy in the back seat.” Jane said. “I even have a little sex toy go-bag in the trunk.”
“I am definitely doing life wrong if I’m tracking down exes instead of improving my life with things like ‘sex toy go-bags.’ ” They were about to go see her ex who taught yoga for a living, and Alex was stressed-out by how many missed opportunities she’d had because she failed to carry a vibrator in her car. She’d probably be a whole lot less stressed-out with that go-bag. Speaking of which, Alex turned to Lana in the back seat. She might have had to pee in front of her children, but she appeared to be pretty calm now. “Do you have any more of that edible?”
Lana rolled her eyes and dug into the front pocket of her purse. She broke off a corner of a brownie and offered it to Alex.
“You remembered that I don’t like fruity pot candy. Thanks, Mom!”
Lana smiled a dreamy smile at her. “You know I always take care of my girlies.”
Forty minutes of PCH traffic later, Alex was glad that she’d eaten the edible. She couldn’t feel anything below her neck, and Jane swearing at all the “fucking idiots trying to get us killed” didn’t really bother her at all.
Alex knew she had a glassy look in her eyes like she’d just spent a lot of time in the ashram before they pulled up to the place. It was actually quite beautiful. She’d met Brody when Lexi had talked her into having a yoga retreat at the ashram for her twenty-first birthday. She’d never let it be said that her grandmother was anything but a genius. By paying to rent the ashram for a day, Lexi was prevented from having to supervise the cleanup of any vomit.
However, Alex had been bound and determined to participate in some kind of debauchery that weekend. And she’d noticed Brody right away. Looking at him now, nearly a decade later, she wanted to give her younger self a high five. Brody was long and whipcord lean. He padded across the studio floor with catlike grace.
And then he smiled, and it was no wonder younger Alex had found him incredibly sexy. She suddenly felt strange and out of place wearing a tank and flip-flops and showing up with her two friends—one of them high enough to be totally absorbed in reading the pamphlets in the lobby.
Brody looked at her as though they’d never met. “We don’t have another class until three—”
Alex opened her mouth, but Jane interjected. “Actually we’re here to see you.” She extended her hand. “I’m Jane Lowry.”
Brody’s entire face changed in that moment. Jane wasn’t famous among the general public, but she was definitely a celebrity among denizens of Los Angeles who wanted to be actors. “Oh shit! Did you see my reel? Are you here to offer me rep?”
This wasn’t the first time this had happened to Jane in public. She’d had starlets follow her into bathrooms to slip her a flash drive—something she’d assured Alex wasn’t a sex thing. Jane didn’t miss a beat when she said, “Um, no. I’m actually here with her.” Jane pointed at Alex.
Brody turned his attention back to Alex. “Are you an agent, too?”
“No, I’m actually—we—um—sort of dated for a while.” Alex didn’t have to search for words very often. It was new thing. “Alex Turner.”
To Brody’s credit, he recovered quickly. “Alex.” Brody walked toward her with open arms. “What gives me the pleasure of your company today?”
And then Alex remembered exactly why she’d stopped finding Brody sexy. He had this weird habit of moving around words in sentences that made them sound just a little bit off. She hated that she judged him for that, and they’d broken up because she’d felt bad about judging him.
When he enveloped her in a sweaty, sweaty hug, she remembered another thing—he smelled like patchouli, and Alex hated patchouli. The hug lingered for a really long time, until it got awkward. When Alex tried to pull away, Brody just held her tighter.
So Alex just stood there, being hugged by an aesthetically attractive if sweaty man for what had to be three minutes. She would never get the smell of patchouli out of this top. She’d probably have to burn it.
She was contemplating industrial detergent when Brody finally pulled back. “How long has it been, my lotus flower?”
Gag. Alex wanted to gag. He was still touching her and growing less attractive by the second. Of all the culturally appropriative trash to spew—
“It’s been about a decade.” Alex stepped back then, firmly into her own space. Who knew that a yoga teacher could harsh her buzz so quickly and effectively? She hoped that Lana had more of that edible for their beach time. “So, I hear you got married.”
Brody had looked as though he’d been about to launch into some wellness influencer diatribe about time and space and quantum mechanics and manifesting, but that caught him short. “Um—”
“Right after we broke up, you got married.” It wasn’t strictly a question, but Brody had always had the habit of treating all questions as open-ended. Alex sometimes encountered that in depositions, so she’d learned to phrase yes/no questions as though they were declarative statements.
Except that tactic seemed to blow out a few circuits in Brody’s brain. “I’m... I’m not sure—”
Then Jane cleared her throat. “Brody, we’re on our way to the beach, but Alex is having a crisis because all of her exes have a strange habit of committing their lives to someone almost immediately after she breaks up with them. We’re trying to figure out if Alex is simply a rehab for broken men or they are so scarred from their time with her that they cling to the next person they meet like a life raft.”