One Small Mistake

by Dandy Smith

I want what they have, that easy, long-lasting love. Maybe I’ve already had it.

Out of the frying pan and into the inferno. I’m going to need another drink to get through this conversation.

The truth is, I only took a job at a fancy marketing company to please them, but after Noah died, my happiness was more important than a job my parents could tell their friends about.

And I hate that at twenty-eight, I am still craving my parents’ approval.

‘Never know, you might be the next J.K. Rowling.’

Ada is she’s a perfectionist. If she isn’t certain she can succeed right away, she steps back so she can’t fail.

I wish my big sister would turn around and slap Ruby instead of handing her dresses.

‘You’re talented, and brave, and ambitious. You’re everything they’re not—’

‘You are not directionless. You know what you want and you’re going after it and fuck them if they can’t respect that. As for your parents … I love Martin and Meredith, but their whole lives have followed a traditional trajectory: job, house, marriage, kids. Boring if you ask me. Not you, though – you’re doing things your way and they don’t like it, but that’ll change when they walk into that bookshop and see your name on the shelf.’

‘Why do you always let people get away with treating you badly?’

It is a lover I can’t quit and when I let it wrap its arms around me, it feels so good, I wonder why I’ve stayed away so long.

I know how much this means to you and if that editor hasn’t picked up your book, she’s a fucking moron.’

Sometimes, even as my brain is screaming for me to stop, my mouth just keeps on going.

But then, a pretty lie is always better than an ugly truth.

I’m in a race I didn’t want to enter.

‘I don’t want to die having never done something I love.

‘Yeah, if someone told me I had to be unhappy for a year and then it would all be over, I could handle that. But if someone told me I had to be unhappy for the next fifty years, I’d have to make a change.’

How is knowing there’s someone worse off supposed to make you feel better? As though it’s socially acceptable to take a little bit of comfort in the knowledge that there’s someone out there suffering more than you are right now.

That’s the thing about words – once they’re out there, they’re no longer just yours. They hang in the quiet and are plucked like cherries from a tree then, bitter or sweet, they’re devoured.

You cannot mention you are tired in front of them because their retort will always be the same. ‘You’re not tired. You won’t know “tired” until you have a baby.’

she looked like she’d accidentally swallowed a carb.

‘We can’t live our lives for other people,’

The market is the problem, not your ability.’

‘You need a love that burns,’ he tells me. ‘A love that consumes. Something exciting, unpredictable. Maybe even a little dangerous.’

But maybe coming up against a puppet master means it’s impossible to know your strings are being pulled.

during negotiation you always ask for the impossible, then settle instead for what you actually wanted in the first place.

‘Besides, there’s more power in making someone change their mind than there is in taking what you want by force.’

‘I think it’s easy for a man to tell a woman she should have children, especially when he’s not the one who has to give birth.’

‘But don’t close yourself off to love because you’re scared.’

‘Love is always a risk; it’s giving another person the power to destroy you and hoping they choose not to, but when it goes right …’ I don’t even think she’s aware that as she says this, her gaze drifts towards Christopher. ‘When it goes right, it’s like falling through stars.’