Page 18 of Everyone Is Lying to You

It’s not until I pick up the phone and put it in front of my face to unlock the screen that I realize I have the wrong device, that I’m staring at a message that definitely is not meant for me.

Even without fully unlocking the phone I can see the start of it.

You won’t get away with this you fucking bitch

It’s from someone saved in the phone asG.

Gray?

It buzzes again. The device practically leaps out of my hands and clatters onto the concrete floor of the balcony. I look behind me before getting down on my hands and knees to pick it up. I gather both phones, mine and Bex’s, and walk into the living room, hoping her device goes back to sleep before she comes out of the bathroom.

I place it on the coffee table face down anyway, to make it seem like I just tossed it there casually when I brought it in. I pour a glass of wine for her, hoping to stall her from picking it up so that the screen will definitely go dark.

“Hey.” I hand her the wine when she walks out. “I had a change of heart. One more nightcap.” Her eyes are slightly glassy from booze and probably exhaustion. She takes it from me politely, but I know she’s not gonna sit down. Suddenly I pull her into onemore fierce hug, and it isn’t just to stall. I want to hug her, to remember what it felt like to touch her. She hugs me back just as hard.

“Let’s get wild tomorrow night,” she says, laughing as she pulls away and walks over to the coffee table. “Let’s have three drinks instead of two and maybe smoke a cigarette.” She slides her phone into the pocket of her sweats without glancing at it.

“Bex…” I start, wanting a few more minutes. “Why…”

Her shiny expression crumbles. Our eyes lock.We’re going to do this. Then she holds up a hand the way I do to shush my children, but it doesn’t feel condescending. “I know what you want to ask and I owe you so much. So many explanations. So many apologies and I want to tell you everything. Tomorrow. I promise. Tomorrow night. We’ll really talk. But I need you to know that I am sorry. I’m sorry for all of it. What happened…You didn’t deserve it.”

As she opens the door she turns around and shoots me the Crest Whitestrip smile I now know so well from her Instagram. It’s so different from her cautious smile in college, the one where she kept her lips closed most of the time to hide her bad teeth.

“We have all the time in the world.”

But we don’t. We don’t have any time at all.

Chapter Six

Rebecca

I want to tell you about the beginning of my marriage. It began as a love story. I need you to know that.

You probably won’t believe me when I say that. I barely believe me.

Especially since I left Lizzie’s hotel room and texted Dan (@SingleDadDan) and asked if I could come over. I needed to blow off some steam and Dan is always game for blowing anything. There are lots of rumors in the influencer world about Dan, but I started most of them so that no one would know I was the one he was spending after-hours time with at these conferences. The #FitnessMom orgy rumor I made up would have been a bit much if there hadn’t been a scandal a couple of years ago where a group of the conservative influencers were all swapping spouses at house parties and dry-humping like high school kids. When they got caught, they made it clear that what they were doing was “soft swinging,” or everything but penetration. It was very confusing.

So because of the rumors I started everyone believes Dan is acad and something of a nonstop sex machine, and I don’t think he minds at all.

Our thing has been pretty transactional since the beginning. The one time a year I get away from my children at this conference, all I want is to feel like a woman with a body that is all my own again.

Heissweet and funny though. I have to give him that. The first time we met at MomBomb San Diego years ago I had asked him to grab me a drink at the bar because I thought he was a waiter.

“I can try. I’m trying to get a drink too,” he’d said.

“Sorry I thought you were a server,” I replied.

“Because I’m handsome enough to also be an extra in the nextMission: Impossiblemovie?” He delivered a thousand-megawatt smile and raised his eyebrows. He had dark tousled hair and baby-blue eyes that had already looked me up and down. I could tell he liked what he saw.

“No. Because the only other men at this mom conference are the ones serving drinks.”

He was sheepish and explained why the conference organizers had invited him, how he was weirdly enjoying himself in San Diego for the first time since his wife passed away three years earlier.

“I guess I feel less alone here,” he’d admitted once we had gotten a couple of beers.

“That makes sense,” I’d said. “Me too.”

“I’m so sorry.” He looked genuinely chagrined. “Are you a widow too?”

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