such a freaking snob right now. You don’t even know this kid. You’re basing your entire low opinion of him on one harmless joke he didn’t even mean—”
Meg’s mouth dropped open. “You think a joke like that is harmless? Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t think it’s as big a deal as you’re making it out to be, that’s for sure.”
“Oh my God,” Meg said, throwing her hands up and looking around as if she was searching for a studio audience, some like-minded chorus she could look at while she pointed at him, like, Can you believe this guy? “Oh my actual God. Okay.”
“Can you calm down?” Colby asked, shaking his head a little. “There’s no point in—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! What’s next, you calling me a hysterical woman?”
“Nobody’s calling you hysterical!” Colby said, though he was definitely thinking it. “I’m just saying, the point is, you’ve been here for all of six hours. This is where I live.”
“Yeah, no kidding!” Meg said. “Which is why it’s actually your job to educate these guys, not mine, but you obviously weren’t about to step up, so—”
“Educate these guys?” Colby gaped at her. “Can you even hear yourself right now?”
“You know what I mean!”
“I know you think you’re better than me and my friends.”
“I know jokes about women are backward and unfunny, actually.”
“Backward,” Colby repeated, shaking his head a little. “That’s cute.”
“Oh my God.” Meg’s lips twisted meanly. “Which one of us is too sensitive here, exactly?”
“It was a joke, Meg! What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is the wage gap, Colby. The big deal is that ninety-five percent of Fortune 500 companies have male CEOs. The big deal is one in three women experiencing sexual violence at some point in their lives—”
“Jesus Christ.” Colby dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Micah isn’t a sex predator.”
“I’m not saying Micah is a sex predator! I’m saying that jokes about how a woman’s main utility is bringing your friend a beer contribute to a culture where stuff like that happens, so why is it such a problem for you to be like, Dude, just tell a different joke? Here, I’ll give you some. A man walks into a bar. Ouch! What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsssh. Two muffins are in an oven. One of them says, ‘Is it hot in here to you?’ And the other one says—”
“Enough!” He thought it was possible she would have kept going indefinitely, that they’d be standing here all night while she went through her entire repertoire of ridiculous dad jokes. He would have laughed if he weren’t so furious. And that was the problem with Meg to begin with, Colby thought suddenly: he could never manage to feel just one thing about her at a time. “You made your point, okay?”
“Oh, I know I did,” Meg said flatly. “You just don’t think it matters.”
“That’s not even—” Colby broke off. “I just don’t see how it’s worth it to ruin a perfectly good party having theoretical arguments, okay? That’s all I’m saying.”
“Nothing about this is theoretical to me!”
Colby scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he said, “I can see that.”
“What does that even mean?” Meg demanded. “Like, where exactly is the line for you for what’s worth giving a crap about? Do you laugh when he tells quote-unquote harmless jokes about gay people? Black people? Jewish p—”
“I didn’t even laugh at this one, Meg!”
“I don’t care! You didn’t tell him to shut up—you’re mad at me for telling him to shut up—and that’s the same thing. Worse, maybe.”
Colby shook his head again, mutely furious. God, where did she get off? Parachuting into his life out of nowhere with The Rich Girl’s Social Justice Handbook in one hand and The Field Guide to the Midwestern Hillbilly in the other? She might as well have been wearing a pith helmet. Colby knew exactly what she saw when she looked around this place—the same clueless, small-minded people she’d been expecting to get on the phone the first night she’d called his landline. She had no idea that Jordan had been at the top of their class the first three years of high school—he definitely knew what a fucking allegory was, no matter what he’d said for the sake of giving her a hard time earlier—or that Joanna had started her own side business doing fancy calligraphy on the internet. Meg didn’t know that after Colby’s dad’s funeral, Micah had shown up