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“I don’t like leaving the house, though. In fact, I’ll do a lot to actively avoid leaving the house. Case in point.” She gestured to the industrial-size box of ramen.
“You hung out with Harrison every chance you got,” she protested. “And you were the one who went up to him, not the other way around.” “I was eight,” Kit said, his voice dry as the Sahara. “It was before I hit puberty and became emo and antisocial. He was grandfathered in before the cutoff.”
Probably shouldn’t have dropped an f-bomb at book club, but there it was.
“But besides loving you and, strangely enough, liking you as a person, I guess I just want to make sure that I didn’t fuck you up irrevocably with my less than stellar parenting skills.”
“We are so weird,” she said. “Be careful, have fun. Make good choices.”
Self-care was hard. Rage wrangling sucked. She needed some escape.
BOGWITCH: Y’all youngsters couldn’t handle me. BOGWITCH: I’ve got a toy drawer full of fun and a lifetime of being disappointed by men. Why the hell would I settle for you amateurs now?
Deb kept inviting her to things—“Girls’ night!” “Mimosa brunch!” “Casino weekend!”—that were really not her cup of tea. So far, she’d managed to dodge Deb’s good intentions and stayed polite, but she was running out of options. At this point, she was afraid Deb might simply come over and kidnap her. Maggie might need a moat. Possibly a minefield. Good spiked barriers made good neighbors.
She was Bogwitch, a badass bitch who wielded a mean blade and liked black-and-white movies.
He doesn’t talk my ear off with stuff I’m not interested in, never noticing that I’m not interested. He doesn’t try to impress me with stuff. He doesn’t just wait for a pause in my conversation so he can jump in with his own shit. He asks questions and actually listens.
He thought you were eighty, you thought he was eighteen. You were like this cross between You’ve Got Mail and Harold and Maude.”
As clichéd as some people might’ve found it, her marriage had really done a number on her, and the last thing she wanted was a man in her life to take care of, to humor, to shrink herself to accommodate.
The idea that there might be an explanation for something he’d always felt like a freak about was eye opening. The thought that he wasn’t alone in it was more comforting than he’d ever realized.
It was like brain fog. She wondered if it was menopause, which made her want to growl. Like the hot flashes and irritability weren’t bad enough, there needed to be confusion too? Thanks, body!
It was like he’d known for years that there was something wrong with him—and now he knew there wasn’t, that this was a valid thing.
“You come out when you’re ready, when you feel safe with it.
“If you can’t handle me in sweatpants, you don’t deserve me in stilettos,”
Maggie reached her hands up, calmly, and took the studs of her dangling silver hoops out of her ears. “Hold these,” she said, handing them to Aiden blindly, feeling his big hand reach over hers. “Why?” Aiden sounded baffled. “Because the gap just closed.” Maggie moved quickly when she wanted to. Sure, she could’ve gone around the table to reach Sheryl . . . but really, it wasn’t that big a table, and going over it would be quicker. If Sheryl was going to be a smug, hurtful bitch, she was going to learn today why it was a bad idea to mess with one of Maggie’s best friends. But in a split
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“Let me go,” Maggie muttered. “I just wanna talk.” With my fists.
“It’s more than looks. You aren’t like anybody I’ve ever met. You’re snarky and snarly and sweet and generous. You’re helpful and kind and act like a honey badger to anyone who tries to point it out. You aren’t as mean as you think, but you’re not to be messed with either. You’re brave and smart and loyal and funny. You are amazing.”
“You’re amazing,” she pointed out. “You’re consistently compassionate in situations that would have me shrieking like a banshee. You’re patient, and empathetic, and helpful. You care about people, at a time when I swear I’d have left every last fuck behind.”
He’d forgotten how awesome kissing could be, honestly. It wasn’t the sort of thing you did by yourself, and in weird ways, it could be more intimate than sex. It was so easy to overlook that until you’d gone without.
path. He was in the enviable position of being old enough to not feel pressured, not worry about fulfilling anybody’s expectations.
I’m surrounded by people who are supposed to love me, as long as I somehow become what they expect of me. And I’m done, okay? I. Am. Done.”
A sheer relief, and a sense of unknown. It was like being in a huge open field, or out on the ocean, with nothing but possibility and the chance to go in any direction, the horizon just spread out endlessly. It was daunting and encouraging, both at once.
Sounds like a “you” problem, not a “me” problem.
