Sabrina could feel the rage boiling up inside of her and willed herself not to scream or do what she really wanted to do, which was claw his face off. “Fuck you,” she said. “Why is that all on me? Why do I have to be the one making the plans to go out to dinner or go away for the weekend? Why can’t you be interested in my day? You have this assumption that whatever it is you’re doing is more interesting than whatever it is that I’m doing.”
“I think that objectively, yes, my day is more interesting than yours,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s more important, but I think it is more interesting.”
“Oh, really, fuck you,” she said. “Maybe I’m trying to make mine more interesting, how about that? Maybe I’m sick of going to work and coming home and taking care of the kids until you decide you feel like showing up.”
“Maybe I’m sick of you not understanding how stressful my job is.”
“Give me a fucking break,” she said. “You want to know what’s stressful? Stressful is your boss asking to talk to you today and telling you—nicely, but telling you—that you should really have a talk with your husband about the story his site is trying to write about him.”
“Wait.” Dan sat down on the bed. “He actually said that?”
“He actually said that,” Sabrina said.
“Can we write about that? That’s fucked up. He shouldn’t be trying to use you like that. Or can I at least say something to him about that? Privately?”
“I’d prefer that you didn’t, actually,” Sabrina said. That was all she needed—her husband confronting her boss in some kind of misguided chivalrous gesture.
“But you know he’s such a douche,” Dan said.
Sabrina shrugged. “Is he really any better or worse than any other guy in tech?”
“He’s pretty bad, Sabrina. I mean, before you started working for him, I knew he was bad, but he’s even worse, and his app is so dumb and pointless—like, why do we need something telling us how to cheer up, as though man’s preferred state of being at all times is to be cheerful so that you can do better work or be a better you—which, by the way, is such a startup way of thinking. It’s like they can’t imagine a world where people have actual emotions or feel sad or angry or frustrated; everything has to be fixed immediately—anyway, this guy just sucks.”
“But…what’s wrong with trying to be happy? I wouldn’t mind trying to be happy, to be perfectly honest.”
“It’s not that being happy is bad,” Dan said. “It’s the fetishization of happiness and productivity above all else that I take issue with.”
“Okay.” She thought for a moment. “But it’s not like you don’t want the people who work for you to be productive too.”
“That’s not the point.” It’s kind of the point, Sabrina thought. But suddenly she was so, so tired. They were silent for a minute. “So will you consider writing that essay?”
“Oh—um,” Sabrina said. “I don’t think so.”
“It could be totally anonymous,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to worry about your name coming up in a Google search or anything like that.”
That was something that hadn’t even occurred to her. But also, was he saying that he wanted her to write it—for him? “Wait. You mean write it for you? For TechScene?”
“Why not?” Dan stood up. “We publish first-person stuff. And we’re trying to do more—just as long as it has something to do with technology or social media or the internet, you know? Boom. That stuff shares really well too.”
“No way. Even if it was anonymous. It just feels…gross. And weird. And what if someone figured it out? No.”
Dan laughed. “That seems unlikely.” He lay down so that his head was near her knees. He looked up at her. “Sorry. I’m just…well, now I’m thinking about seeing you masturbating.” He smiled. She could tell he was getting hard. He turned toward her and scooted up a little farther, and she slid down toward him. He started kissing her ear, then her neck. She thought about the stacks of cashmere hidden deep in her closet as one of his hands moved under the vintage Velvet Underground concert T-shirt (which she’d bought for seventy-five dollars on eBay) and found her right nipple while the other hand slipped under the band of the thirty-six-dollar Cosabella boy shorts she’d ordered ten pairs of last week. Her vagina was moist; whether it was still from getting herself off or the way he was rubbing her clit, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that the last couple times they’d tried to have sex, she’d been so dry that even copious amounts of lube hadn’t helped. “You like that?” he whispered into her ear as he rubbed her clit harder, and she moaned. She did like it, she did, and he flipped her over and pulled her up toward him so he could thrust into her, holding her small, firm tits in one hand and one of her hips in the other. She thought of Natalie.
All of a sudden, right as she was getting close, he came inside her with a jolt, no warning. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, flipping her back over. “Here, let me…” He started moving down her body, but one of their phones vibrated, and she wriggled up. “It’s okay, Dan,” she said. He didn’t protest.
“Be right back,” he whispered in her ear and went into the bathroom. She lay on the bed for a moment, listening to him pee, and then glanced down at her phone. Nothing. Then she noticed Dan’s phone on the bed. It must have fallen out of his pants. She didn’t think twice about what she was about to do, just picked it up and looked at the screen. It said: Katya Pasternack—iMessage. Dan must have had his notifications set so you couldn’t read the actual message on the lock screen. She thought for a moment—now the water was running—and typed in Owen’s birthday, Dan’s numerical password for everything. She quickly opened his messages tab, and, without opening the actual message, she read the first couple lines of Katya’s text: hey def can’t meet up later, sorry. See u tomorrow. She heard the water stop running, put the phone on the lock screen, and tossed it back to where it had ended up on the bed. Dan came out of the bathroom, glanced at her, and smiled. She half smiled back.
25
Keep Your Friends Close