The Guest

by Emma Cline

Whatever charm she had was losing its potency. Not fully, not totally, but enough that she began to understand it was a possibility.

she had long ago become inured to the disapproval of strangers.

Younger men had to make everything mean something, had to turn every choice and preference into a referendum on their personality.

Or maybe Alex had known, in some part of herself, that she was ruining everything, known how bad things could get, and maybe she had done it anyway.

Maybe. Or maybe Alex saw hatred everywhere, imagined it where it didn’t exist, and that was her problem, not theirs.