Brett is mulling over what I’ve just said, rolling her bottom lip in her top teeth. “You really think she’s picked up on that?”
I prop an elbow on the back of the seat, shifting so that my knees point in her direction. It’s like the Wonder Woman pose but for empathy—if you put yourself in the position for it, maybe actual empathy will come. “Of course she’s picked up on it. That’s why she’s so lucky to have you in her life. You are the one who makes her feel loved and wanted. You are setting an example of hard work and perseverance.”
Brett waves me off bashfully—You don’t mean that but yes of course you do because I am the ne plus ultra aunt, businesswoman, lesbian, human being. I swallow repeatedly to force the acidic truth back down: She’s twelve going on twenty-eight for a reason, you halfwit. When I was twelve, I was painting my friend’s nails and making up dances to Boyz II Men songs, not attending staff meetings with my aunt and running her company’s social media campaign. She feels like she has to contribute or you won’t love her. That she can’t just be a kid because being a kid is a burden on you.
Brett tips her head back, running her fingers through her wet hair. I can smell her Moroccan oil shampoo again. Mixed in with the Febreze and cigarette smell of the cab, my brain marches in olfactory protest. “Steph,” she says, “are we okay? I mean, real okay. Not TV okay. I know you have a lot going on right now so I can’t tell if it’s that or if it’s something . . . something I did.”
The almost-admission makes me hold my breath. Keep going, I urge her, exonerate yourself.
“Because.” She takes a shaky breath. It’s coming! She’s going to do it! “I miss us,” she continues, “but it’s never going to go back to the way it was. I’m not the runt of the group anymore. I’m not going to stop being successful because you’re uncomfortable with my success, Steph.”
It is all I can do not to laugh in her fat, beautiful face. They should list impaired hearing as a side effect on the bottle of fame. There are so many people clapping for you all the time, for walking, for breathing, for wiping your own ass, that it drowns out what I like to call your not that inner voice, the one that says you’re not that smart, you’re not that talented, you’re not that funny. Some may confuse this gag for progress, as women come out of the womb hearing we are not enough. But having been on both sides of the fence I can tell you this: If you don’t hate yourself just a little bit, you are intolerable.
In any case, I am back in touch with my not that inner voice as of late. No one is clapping for me anymore. I’m probably a lot more fun to be around for everybody else, but when I lie in bed at night I can’t help but wish that this human suit of mine came with a zipper, that I could hang it in my custom white oak closet with the Chanel spotlights and take a break from myself, even for an hour.
I have been saying I am too old for Talkhouse since before I was too old for Talkhouse. The crowd tonight is twenty-one years old or fifty, no one in between but the two of us. It’s the first time I’ve ever been where there is room to rest my elbow on the bar in the main room, with a clear view of the empty dance floor and the stage, where a few roadies are busy assembling a drum set. The rain has kept it quiet so far. My new wedges are squeegeeing water with every step and I don’t dare release my ponytail for fear of the shape my hair will take on its own, but the cameras aren’t here, two fingers of tequila are playing the tendons in my throat, and downwind, a pack of fraternity brothers in pastel shorts are debating how old to tell us they are.
“Girls?” The bartender places two plastic cups in front of us, half-full with something clear. Vodka shots. Shit. They might not even be twenty-one. “From the gentlemen down the way.” The bartender indicates with a thumb. That two adult women with multimillion-dollar empires between them are referred to as girls and this group of rosy-cheeked pussy grabbers as gentlemen—even facetiously—is the problem with the world in two words.
The boldest one calls over the Pool Party 2017 playlist, “You were looking too serious over there!”
Brett turns to me, mouth agape, and I match her outraged expression—time to have some fucking fun.
Brett shouts back, “You basically just told us to smile. It’s been illegal to tell women to smile since 2013.”
He takes the rebuke as an invitation to approach, which, of course it was. Closer, I see that his baseball hat is from a sailing regatta he attended in Newport two summers ago when he was ten. “Yeah, ’cause no one ever tells men to smile. It’s only women who are expected to be pleasing and accommodating at all times.”
Brett makes a raspberry sound with her lips. “Ex-fucking-cuse me?”
The kid tucks his hands in his back pockets, broadening his hairless chest, ever so pleased with himself. “We watched that short Stop Telling Women to Smile in my women’s studies class.” He dips his head and looks up at us with a debilitating smile. “We watched your show too.”
Brett flips her hair to the other side of her shoulder. It’s drying in gorgeous, wild waves. I’m still thinner.
“So?” I rest a hip against the bar and fold my arms across my chest, scooping my breasts so that my top pulls up, exposing a sliver of lean midriff. “Which one of us is your favorite?”
“Oh, man.” He laughs, twisting his hat around backward, smearing his thick blond hair across his forehead. If we were all in college at the same time, he wouldn’t bother with either of us. “Lauren, probably.”
“Shocking!” Brett rolls her eyes.
“You asked me who my favorite is. Not who’s hottest.” He looks right at me, and goddamnit if his shit-eating grin doesn’t impale me from my inner thighs to my sternum.
Brett says, “Because it’s 2017 and women care fuck all if a bunch of whiskey dick frat boys think they’re hot.” She twists a hair around her finger, her brown eyes huge and nonthreatening. Oh, she cares. We all care. Women sexually attracted to socks are not impervious to the male gaze. The difference today is, we have to say that we are. Feminism doesn’t emancipate us, it’s just one more impossible standard to meet.
Brett leans in closer, her voice greased with charm. “But for shits and giggles, if you . . .” She flutters her eyelashes up at him and waits.
“Tim,” Tim supplies after an unsexy moment of confusion.
“Tim,” Brett speaks his name with comic seduction, soft on the “T,” long and yummy on the “m.” “If you were to pick the hottest, Tim. Who would it be?”
He gestures at us with a startled expression on his face, like he can’t believe we even had to ask. “Either one of you. And I swear I’m not just saying that because you’re both here. The other girls”—he shows them the exit with a sideways scoop of his hand—“I know a million girls who look like that. You two are different.”
Different is good, Instagram tells you. Conformity is boring. Be you because everyone else is taken. Easy to repost in earnest when you haven’t labored under the duress of different all your life.
“A tie?” Brett pouts.
“Yeah, Tim,” I cosign, “girls like us? We don’t do ties. Someone has to lose.”
Tim points his chin at the ceiling with a groan, as though we have tasked him with settling something as complex as the national budget.
“It’s honestly a tie,” he says. “But if I’m hedging my bets . . .” He looks from me to Brett from Brett to me, oscillating between two sets of pleading oh, please, pick me! eyes. “I’d go with you.” He shrugs one shoulder half-heartedly in my direction.
Brett covers her heart with her hand and crumples a little.
“You don’t like guys,” Tim reminds her.
“You’re into the cougar thing.” She sips her drink. “I get it.”