That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

The moon is full and shining, and the stars are brilliant pinpoints in the sky, and she can hear the wind, the churn of the waves, the heave and toss of the dark water, the endlessness of it. As she raises the cup to her lips, she thinks, I will never be happier than I am, right now, in this moment. She thinks, This is the best night of my life.

for old married ladies like them, making a new friend was the closest they could get to falling in love.

He’s always been one of those born-on-third-base-and-thinks-he-hit-a-triple types.

Diana thought about how men made messes and women cleaned them up; how this was the way of the world.

in a world where being born female meant spending years of your life at risk, and the rest of it invisible, existing as prey or barely existing at all.