Read Online Private Politics (The Easy Part) by Emma Barry - Free Book Online
Authors: Emma Barry
Ads: Link
investment bankers and the corporate lawyers. She’d attended the parties. She’d limited her ambitions. All the while, she’d assumed she would return to the nest. The cold, perfectly ordered nest.
And it seemed like the day of reckoning was coming. The viable, delightful world she’d structured for herself was not going to last much longer. Everything in DC was changing. Soon enough, Millie and Parker would buy a place and get married. As a result of whatever she had uncovered, there would be a shake-up at YWR. Even Margot had started speaking longingly about moving back to California.
Alyse pushed through the doors into the theater and searched for a seat away from everyone else. She often got the sense other people thought she was urbane. Maybe because they told her she was. It was nice to hear, but the label wasn’t her, or wasn’t all of her. She wasn’t just a classy, elegant girl. She didn’t always have to be cosmos and stilettos and gallery openings.
She cared about appearances because appearances mattered. She cared about money because money mattered. Those weren’t her values—they were the world’s. She could play in that realm and still be her, still like trashy television, cheap beer and fried food. She could be jeans and wedges and rainy weekend afternoons at dumb action movies. She was large; she contained multitudes.
Going to the movies alone was both at once, somehow. It was low-brow because her taste was low-brow. She wasn’t hitting non-subtitled foreign movies at the indie places. No, strictly Hollywood fare, the more mass-market the better. But having the courage to go the movies alone and to look great while doing it? Oh yes, that might be the soul of sophistication.
She holed up in the back row, munched on her candy and people-watched while waiting for the previews. Everyone else there was part of a couple. This was not inherently problematic. It didn’t cause the totally-not-related-to-jealousy sting because in most cases they didn’t seem happy.
At the front were two teenagers who sat in silence for five minutes. They stared at their respective phones and basically ignored the person in the adjacent seat. They might not be together at all.
Then there was the middle-aged couple to the left of her who were clearly fighting, all tense whispered exchanges and closed-off body language. Who went to a rom-com in the middle of an argument anyway?
At the engagement party the previous week, Alyse had felt pangs of jealousy but that was because no one could see two people as obviously right together as Millie and Parker and not feel
something
. At some point in the past six months she’d decided that she wanted full-fat only, please—a first and likely last vote for that.
So she’d stopped calling Quentin back and within days, he’d stopped calling. They hadn’t broken up. There hadn’t been a sting. They’d simply stopped seeing each other.
Once she realized that, she’d made a new declaration: the next time she broke up with a man, she wanted to damn well know it. The next time, whenever it was, she wanted the whole thing, including of course the terse exchanges, but also the sympathy, the love and the toe-curling goodness, the I-can’t-keep-my-hands-to-myself desire and the unshakeable companionship.
As the lights dimmed and the previews finally started, another couple slid in two rows ahead of her. Four seconds of observation and she knew they were at the honeymoon-y, early stage of their relationship. They were so solicitous there was simply no explaining it otherwise.
They’d both started talking and then giggled. Then they struggled cutely over the armrest, not yet knowing the other’s preferences and personal space requirements. There had been some sort of exchange about where to put drinks and popcorn punctuated by titters. Were things really that funny in the early fluttery stages of a relationship?
Since they weren’t touching, but clearly wanted to, it might
And it seemed like the day of reckoning was coming. The viable, delightful world she’d structured for herself was not going to last much longer. Everything in DC was changing. Soon enough, Millie and Parker would buy a place and get married. As a result of whatever she had uncovered, there would be a shake-up at YWR. Even Margot had started speaking longingly about moving back to California.
Alyse pushed through the doors into the theater and searched for a seat away from everyone else. She often got the sense other people thought she was urbane. Maybe because they told her she was. It was nice to hear, but the label wasn’t her, or wasn’t all of her. She wasn’t just a classy, elegant girl. She didn’t always have to be cosmos and stilettos and gallery openings.
She cared about appearances because appearances mattered. She cared about money because money mattered. Those weren’t her values—they were the world’s. She could play in that realm and still be her, still like trashy television, cheap beer and fried food. She could be jeans and wedges and rainy weekend afternoons at dumb action movies. She was large; she contained multitudes.
Going to the movies alone was both at once, somehow. It was low-brow because her taste was low-brow. She wasn’t hitting non-subtitled foreign movies at the indie places. No, strictly Hollywood fare, the more mass-market the better. But having the courage to go the movies alone and to look great while doing it? Oh yes, that might be the soul of sophistication.
She holed up in the back row, munched on her candy and people-watched while waiting for the previews. Everyone else there was part of a couple. This was not inherently problematic. It didn’t cause the totally-not-related-to-jealousy sting because in most cases they didn’t seem happy.
At the front were two teenagers who sat in silence for five minutes. They stared at their respective phones and basically ignored the person in the adjacent seat. They might not be together at all.
Then there was the middle-aged couple to the left of her who were clearly fighting, all tense whispered exchanges and closed-off body language. Who went to a rom-com in the middle of an argument anyway?
At the engagement party the previous week, Alyse had felt pangs of jealousy but that was because no one could see two people as obviously right together as Millie and Parker and not feel
something
. At some point in the past six months she’d decided that she wanted full-fat only, please—a first and likely last vote for that.
So she’d stopped calling Quentin back and within days, he’d stopped calling. They hadn’t broken up. There hadn’t been a sting. They’d simply stopped seeing each other.
Once she realized that, she’d made a new declaration: the next time she broke up with a man, she wanted to damn well know it. The next time, whenever it was, she wanted the whole thing, including of course the terse exchanges, but also the sympathy, the love and the toe-curling goodness, the I-can’t-keep-my-hands-to-myself desire and the unshakeable companionship.
As the lights dimmed and the previews finally started, another couple slid in two rows ahead of her. Four seconds of observation and she knew they were at the honeymoon-y, early stage of their relationship. They were so solicitous there was simply no explaining it otherwise.
They’d both started talking and then giggled. Then they struggled cutely over the armrest, not yet knowing the other’s preferences and personal space requirements. There had been some sort of exchange about where to put drinks and popcorn punctuated by titters. Were things really that funny in the early fluttery stages of a relationship?
Since they weren’t touching, but clearly wanted to, it might
Similar Books
