Page 21 of Everyone Is Lying to You

I tried to snatch the phone away from her, but she was shockingly fast for a person with the blood alcohol level of a rodeo clown. Before I knew it, she’d dashed out the screen door in the back of the motel room. I followed her in just a towel.

“You can’t write back yet. You’ve got to play hard to get, Bex. Trust me on this one.”

Everything in my body burned to get to that phone, to see what he wrote, to call him back and beg him to meet me at my motel that very minute.

“Time to cool off. Come on.” Jamie placed my phone on a rock on the riverbank and wiggled out of her jeans. Before I knew it I’d dropped my towel and dove in after her. She was right. It was the only way I could play it cool.

And now all I can wonder is how that man went from someone I had to jump into an icy cold river to get out of my mind to someone I would do anything to escape from.

Chapter Seven

Lizzie

I should be hungover but I’m not. Probably because I went to bed at ninep.m. and got to sleep until the decadent hour of seven forty-five. And when I woke up, I merely opened my eyes, looked around at the beautiful room, saw that no one needed me, and closed them again.

There is no child at the foot of the bed gnawing on my toe and no husband to give thirteen directions to in order to get the day on track.

It’s pure fucking heaven. I consider room service, but remember I told Bex we could have breakfast in her room. I text before I get in the shower, but there’s no answer. After three unanswered texts the glow of our reunion from last night wears off and I remember that this is a woman who once begged me to fly to California to visit her and meet her new boyfriend and then disappeared. The same woman who abruptly ended our friendship in a six-line email that was so cruel I can still quote from it today.

The memory stings more than I want it to. Yes, back then I’d paid for the plane ticket to California with my own money and it wasn’t cheap. Yes, I’d planned on staying with Bex and instead had to book a ridiculously expensive room at a grungy hotel by the airport for three days because everything in the city limits cost more than my monthly rent, and yes, I had been insanely excited to see my friend, to hug her and, if I am being totally honest, to make sure she was okay, because she had been fading from my life for a year and I wanted to know why. But when I arrived…nothing. She didn’t answer my calls or texts. I took the train and then a bus to the address I had for her and her boyfriend and banged on the door. No answer even though I could hear that someone was in there.

I went to her work. They gave me some lame excuse about why she wasn’t there. And then, right before I was ready to do something like call the police (not that I actually thought they would do anything), I got that email from her.

Last night I’d been too giddy at our pleasant reunion to push her for an explanation, and she probably wants to kick the can of our backstory down the road until I write a glowing profile of her for the magazine so she can make even more money.

I keep thinking about that one line from Bex’s email all those years ago, the one that haunts me the most.

You’re obsessed with me and it has to stop.

That single line was the reason I never reached out after that.

I’m pissed off all over again before I’ve even had a proper cup of coffee.

Avoiding the big conversation, I decide, is classic Bex. Nothing has changed despite the fact that she made me belly laughlike a toddler last night. Despite the fact that being with her made me feel like me again in a way I didn’t even know I was hungry for. I’m annoyed, but also somehow vindicated at the fact that nothing about her has really changed.

I dress in the most Instagrammable thing I packed, a maxi dress from a Dôen photoshoot that I brought home on a whim even though nothing about it was practical or felt like me. The material was slightly too sheer, the ruffly lace on the ends of the cap sleeves and neckline screamed Disney princess, and the calico print made me look like a sexy Mennonite. That’s how Peter described it the one time I tried it on in our bedroom. But when in Rome you do as the Romans do. This dress will absolutely help me fit in here, and for some reason, I want to.

In the elevator I overhear one woman say, “I feel so great. This place is totally mom spring break. We know how to party and network and celebrate and be in bed by nine-thirty!”

“I got four new sponsors last night and I did the vodka ice luge.”

“It’s because that vodka is organic.”

I stifle a laugh. Both women turn and assess me. They take in my orange press bracelet and my badge and decide not to over-engage.

“Nice dress,” Ice Luger says, and resumes her own conversation.

I wind through the exhibit tables set up en route to the ballroom, stopping every so often to hear a spiel and get a free thing.

The hotel’s main ballroom is packed and the first morning session is in full force. Servers roam the room bearing sponsored snacks on silver platters. They’re all the kinds of foods that momswould buy in the supermarket and serve to their kids for breakfast. Eggo is apparently a major sponsor of this event, at least as far as I can tell from their signage all over the place. But the child food is dressed up fancy for the adults. Eggo mini-waffles are topped with artisanal local goat cheese and heirloom mini tomatoes. Individual egg bites, the kind you pop in the microwave for a minute, have dollops of caviar on top. Caviar! The level of extravagance, the money spent at this event, I haven’t seen anything like it in years, not since magazines actually shelled out for Fashion Week parties and book launches. Those days are long gone, or at least I thought they were, but now the money is here and it’s flowing.

Four women are on the stage beneath an archway of fake greenery and a neon sign that screamsI Am Woman.

Roar,I think as I snag a mini muffin from the buffet and sit at a table in the back of the room. There are notepads at every seat withMotherhood, Enhancedon the top. Enhance me, I think. Happy to let you do your best.

The moderator of this particular talk, an excessively tall woman in a pastel yellow sundress and blond extensions that nearly reach her butt, smiles wide as she addresses her panel. “Introduce yourself, ladies, and tell me about your zone of genius.”

A brunette with a massive pregnant belly and a calico dress quite similar to my own begins. “I am a multi-hyphenate human who goes with the flows of the moon to show up authentically for myself and my community. I love speaking from the heart and showing up for my authentic self because that is the way to honor the purpose of my life.”

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