The Whistler (The Whistler, #1)

by John Grisham

The truth was that, at the age of thirty-six, Lacy was content to live alone, to sleep in the center of the bed, to clean up only after herself, to make and spend her own money, to come and go as she pleased, to pursue her career without worrying about his, to plan her evenings with input from no one else, to cook or not to cook, and to have sole possession of the remote control.

About a third of her girlfriends were young divorcées, all scarred and wounded and wanting no part of another man, not for the moment anyway. Another third were stuck in bad marriages with little hope of getting out. And the rest of her girlfriends were content with their relationships and either pursuing careers or having children. She didn’t like the math. Nor did she like society’s way of presuming she was unhappy because she had not found the right guy. Why should her life be determined by when and whom she married? She hated the assumption that she was lonely. If she’d never lived with a man, how could she miss one?

Part of being single was dealing with the misconceptions of others.