Thank you!

But then backspaced over it and simply hit “like” instead. I didn’t want to seem too eager. And probably, she was directing that at Erin since they are longtime acquaintances, but it somehow made me feel a lot less nervous about going to the party at Margot’s in-laws’ Tuesday night.

So just now, when Graham sits down next to Jack and eats toast, I make them both look up at me, and snap another photo.

“Wait, is this for Facebook?” Graham asks, and when I nod, he sarcastically pulls a handsome, brooding face and says, “Okay, now we’re ready.”

I snap it and type, Sunday brunch with these guys! And quickly post it.

Three

Days

Later

9

Present

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

THE GARDEN PARTY at the Banks estate was last night, and I still can’t get over the decadence and sumptuousness of it all. And all that drinking on a near-empty stomach hit me hard. But I couldn’t say no to Margot refilling my champagne glass. Margot. My neck flushes just thinking about her, remembering her breath on my neck.

I’m on the jogging trail. I got a late start this morning—it’s nearly ten o’clock—and it’s already boiling out. I’m running down the hill and it’s so boggy, it feels like I’m wading through a swamp.

I don’t see the man in his yard today, which I’m glad about. My T-shirt is soaked through with sweat and clings to my chest. I push harder, trying to outrun this drilling hangover. When my head hit the pillow last night, the room actually twirled and I had to screw my eyes shut and grab the side of the bed to make it stop.

* * *

—

I REACH MY house and am trudging up the drive when my cell dings. I shudder. And pray it’s not Jack’s preschool teacher. My plans for the rest of the day involve a cheeseburger and sinking into the couch. I’m not even gonna pretend to do any work. Stepping inside the back door, I slide the phone from my pocket.

It’s a group text, with a string of numbers I don’t recognize. But then I read the name of the group chat and understand:

THE HUNTING WIVES

903-555-8528: You know the drill. 6:30 pm, Friday night at my place. Jill—how did Alex take it?

903-555-0947 is typing. A few moments pass, then finally:

He’s fine. Pouting but he’ll get over it. Wouldn’t lay a finger on me last night.

I’m piecing together who is who and creating new contacts as quickly as I can.

Margot: Oh poor baby. As if one night of no sex will kill ya.

Jill: ?

354-555-8956: I’m in!

Must be Tina, Fort Worth area code. Then:

Callie:

I couldn’t believe Margot had actually invited me last night. I figured she was drunk, that she wouldn’t follow through. But here she is, asking me. My head is spinning.

I start to type and then stop. Start to type and then stop. Then settle on: Sounds so fun! I’m in as well!

Margot: yay

Me: Just curious, how did you guys get my cell?

Margot: From Facebook. Where your life is laid bare.

I can’t tell if she’s talking about my life or everyone’s in general.

Margot: and oops, here’s my address: 714 Forest Lake Road . . . you’ll drive forever, if GPS fails you, call one of us.

Tina: And boots! Wear some boots.

I type back: thanks!

* * *

—

I SET MY phone down next to me. My face is flushed, and my heart is pinging in my chest.

10

IF MAPLETON WERE a shape, it would be an oval. At the top of the oval is the tallest hill in town, the only real vista in Mapleton. Graham jokes that it feels like we’re living inside a bowl. And he’s right, of course. There are no sweeping views in town other than on top of the ridge, a sharp, jutting chunk of red clay that seems formed by a long-ago earthquake. The rest of Mapleton, the newer part—our neighborhood, the strip malls—dips down into the bowl where the sight line is obscured by a screen of towering pines.

The ridge is postcard Mapleton: the historical downtown district with its ancient churches and storefronts, the redbrick high school—ivy coated, with arched passageways—and the quaint library lined with stained glass windows. It’s also where the money houses are, like Margot’s. And also Margot’s in-laws’, the Banks estate, where the party was held last night.

It’s midmorning and I’m driving past the outskirts of their neighborhood now, killing time while making my usual weekday stops. To the dry cleaner’s to pick up Graham’s lightly starched shirts, to the market for groceries and ingredients for strawberry cupcakes for a bake sale later this week at Jack’s preschool.

The whole of Mapleton is encircled by a four-lane highway—appropriately known as “the Loop”—and as I cruise down it, past Castle Hill, then on past Margot’s neighborhood, a flicker of excitement zips through me.

* * *

—

I KNOW MY fixation with Margot isn’t normal. It’s one step beyond normal, and I know what my old friend Rox, from the magazine, would say—that I’m once again chasing something unattainable, something unhealthy—and for a moment, I’m filled with a sharp longing to be back in Chicago, sitting across the table from her at the café we used to frequent, talking about our lives.

I hired Rox as the art director of the magazine just six months into my tenure as editor. She had short, spiky black hair with the tips dyed in bright greens or purples. Her blue eyes were so pale, they almost looked silver. She wore the same uniform most days—an army jacket or black leather motorcycle jacket over expensive jeans.

Before she came to the magazine, she had worked freelance as a graphic designer and photographer, and in addition to being knockout brilliant, there was something about her that I immediately liked the first time we met.

She had been a military brat—moving around abroad as a child and in the US as a teen—so we spoke the same language, and also, Rox was ten years older than me and streetwise.

We took to each other and I found myself wanting to hang out with her more than the twentysomethings at the magazine, the climbers.

Rox was there for some of my nastier breakups, and also for my courtship with Graham.

“Graham’s the one,” she’d said one day in her deep smoker’s voice, gripping a cigarette and taking sharp, stinging drags from it. “And I’ll never forgive you if you fuck this up.”

We were sitting outside the café that afternoon on the patio. She was drumming the table with her long fingers that were adorned with silver skull-and-crossbones rings, inhaling her triple espresso. She’d noticed the flirty barista making eyes at me, and noticed me blushing at his attention and making eyes back.

“Look, we all have hormones,” she said. “I get it. But you do want something stable; you do want happiness. And that schmo over there? Please.”

“And what about you?” I asked, tilting my head, teasing her. Rox was always guarded about her past and even current relationships, but from what I gathered, she preferred quick flings over anything long-lasting.

“People like me don’t get married. I can’t be tied down. But you, it’s what you truly want.”

And I knew she was right.

Graham and I were six months away from our wedding, and for some perplexing reason, I’d developed cold feet. I had to find out why. So Rox and I took a long break from work that day and I spilled my guts to her. About how I was suddenly afraid of commitment, about how, even though I was head over heels for Graham, I’d become worried about whether he was the one. Marriage had started to seem like such a scary and final thing, and I was near panicked that day, but she coolly broke it all down for me.

“Look, what you’re dealing with is a classic case of self-sabotage,” she said, grinding her cigarette out in the metal ashtray. “I’m not trying to be an asshole here, but you have to trust me. It’s not Graham. It’s you.”

Fear of intimacy. That’s what she called it.

During our friendship, we’d sifted through the rubble of my childhood enough so that she knew about my father’s abandonment and Nikki’s tumbleweed-like nature.

“You don’t feel worthy of love, or stability, because of the way you were raised. On some fundamental level, you’re drawn to those who don’t want you, because you didn’t feel wanted by your mom or your dad,” she said, lighting another cigarette with her dark purple lighter. “So when everything is going great, your instinct is to wreck it. But you do deserve happiness, Soph. You can be whole. This isn’t just some psychobabble bullshit. I really mean it.”

Before my friendship with Rox, I’d never given much thought to my childhood. I knew it hadn’t been traditional, or even ideal, but it wasn’t as though I’d been abused. But as Rox pointed out, my childhood hadn’t been exactly stable, either.

* * *

—