better. Cleo felt a little dizzy and closed her eyes, pointed her face toward the sky until it passed. Jesus. She’d justified her behaviors toward MaryAnne for so many years that she hadn’t considered them objectively: that after her parents died and maybe before that too—with MaryAnne’s leg up from her own parents’ connections and with Cleo’s just a bit more promising work ethic and acumen, she had believed she deserved the success, that she was the worthier one, so she stripped those opportunities from her best friend.
That wasn’t deserving at all.
“What I would tell you,” Cleo said finally, once she righted herself and looked from one set of wide eyes to the other, “is that . . . well, the truth is that I’m not great at friends. Obviously. I wish I had better advice, but being an adult sometimes means that you make choices. And I made mine. And then you live with the consequences, which sometimes work in your favor and sometimes, well, they do not.” She tried to smile, but she worried she just looked nauseated.
“That’s not very reassuring,” the first girl said.
“We’ve been told we can have it all,” the second one echoed. “You’re telling us that we can’t?”
“I’m telling you that sometimes you find yourself at a crossroads, and maybe you guys will be best friends forever, and I hope that you will.” She smiled then, genuinely. She wished that so very much for these girls who had not yet faced what the world would throw at them, how it would ask them to work harder, fight better, climb faster than it would ask of any man. “But what I’m also telling you is that sometimes you have to make choices, and sometimes this means that you’ll choose . . . you.” Cleo thought of Beverly Hills, 90210, which she and MaryAnne had considered appointment television, and that episode where Kelly Taylor chooses herself. She hadn’t meant to quote Kelly Taylor, but maybe she should rewatch (when would she have time to rewatch?) and see if Kelly Taylor wasn’t a bit of a feminist.
“You?” one of the friends asked.
“You,” Cleo answered, pointing a finger at her. Would it have been so hard if Cleo had chosen them? She and MaryAnne together?
“OK,” one girl said. “Well, thanks.”
Cleo didn’t want to leave it on a down note. She hadn’t meant to discourage them. “Would you like to take a photo?”
They each shook their head, turned their back, walked away.
Bowen met her on the corner outside her apartment, just in front of the Korean deli, which had been there since she bought the place and had saved her more than a few times when her pantry and refrigerator were empty and she had a toddler to feed.
She had showered since the fun run and stood in front of her mirror for too long, trying to figure out what to wear. She knew that, especially for women, clothes told your story before you even opened your mouth, and she had a story to tell today. Also, she wanted to look nice for Bowen, even if she pretended that she didn’t, but she wanted to look amazing for Nobells. She might be a buttoned-up senator, but drop-dead gorgeous still felt like its own sort of revenge.
She settled on the same violet blouse she’d worn to meet Matty in Seattle, which reminded her of MaryAnne, which reminded her of those sophomore girls from the park. She tugged on a pair of skinny jeans that she already knew she’d regret with today’s humidity, then reached for her phone and pulled up Facebook. Clicked on MaryAnne’s page. The comment thread to her op-ed had grown even longer, what with her ad having run a few days past. Cleo had told Gaby to stop giving her updates on the YouTube ratio because she didn’t need the approval of strangers. (Theoretically she did, if she were to run for president, but for now, no, no, she did not.) But the people she knew . . . well, she was learning that after thirty-seven years, maybe she did actually care about their opinions.
With Oliver jetting back east to his rendezvous with Gaby, she had one fewer defender in the comments. Instead, what she read was a frenzy, a pile-on, an online mob scene that she was familiar with because anytime she was featured in a big news piece, Gaby reminded her not to read the comments. Never read the comments. And here she was, reading