Read Online The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner - Free Book Online Page B

little more pedestrian than Shazia, but she was a former Miss Teen America who’d worked steadily on TV shows and in films, mostly horror movies, where she’d be chased through a dark house and murdered in the first ten minutes. At twenty-six, she’d married Dave Lieberman. At twenty-eight, she’d had twins and had since all but retired from acting. Like many Hollywood wives, she worked as a decorator. Unlike many Hollywood wives, who treated their job as a hobby and spent their time redecorating one another’s houses, Molly was actually good at herjob—she’d taken classes, done an internship at Elle Décor, apprenticed herself to one of the top commercial designers in town, and now made more money than she had as an actress. Molly moved with the confidence of a woman who never doubted her place in the world, her good looks, her husband’s love and loyalty. That night, she was dressed in her usual surfer-girl chic, a floor-skimming halter-style maxi dress in a floaty chiffon, with a slightly threadbare lavender sweater wrapped loosely around her shoulders. She had Havaiana flip-flops on her feet, and a necklace bearing diamond charms that spelled the initials of one of her sons’ names around her neck. Her hair hung in loose, beachy waves that floated down to the center of her back.
    After she’d dispatched Dave to the bar, Molly reached over and adjusted the brim of my hat. I tried not to blush, or to grin like an idiot—a real live movie star, touching my things, treating me as if I belonged! “How are you?” Molly asked, sounding as if she actually cared. “Are you thrilled?”
    “Thrilled,” I repeated. The truth was, I was still in a state of disbelief that something I’d written, something I’d thought up in the privacy of my own bedroom, and on long walks, and while I was in the pool or the shower, was actually going to be cast and shot and might, if everything went well, someday be shown on TV.
    Molly looked over my shoulder. “And how about you, Gary?” she asked. “Your girlfriend’s blowing up!”
    Gary managed a smile and bobbed his head in a quick nod.
    “Who’s going to be there?” he’d asked when I’d told him about the dinner. “Nobody special,” I’d said, knowing that if he’d known that Molly and Shazia, both the Daves, and the head of comedy for the network were coming, he’d find a way to be busy, or sick, or out of town. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d come,” I told him. “It’ll be fun,” I’d said. I’d emailed him reviews of the restaurant, which was supposed to have the bestrib eye in town, extra-strong martinis, and warm butter pound cake for dessert, and I had been extra-solicitous in bed. Finally I’d given him what amounted to an ultimatum: Please come. I need you there . He’d squirmed, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. “It doesn’t sound like my kind of thing,” he’d said.
    “But it’s my kind of thing,” I’d pointed out, and added that I’d gone to his school’s end-of-year potluck picnic, that I’d chatted with his colleagues and even gotten into the principal’s swimming pool, scars and all. Why is it not your thing? I wanted to ask . . . but part of me didn’t want to know the answer and just hoped that he’d be a good boyfriend and come with me.
    Gary and I had met in the coffee shop where I’d retreated after things had fallen apart with Rob and I’d left The Girls’ Room. I’d run ads on Craigslist advertising my services—for a fee, I’d help high-school seniors craft their college essays. Gary had watched me working and asked if I could help him with his personal ad on Match.com, where he was flying, unnoticed and un-dated, under the handle “Lonelyguy.” (“Why?” I’d asked him. “Was ‘Desperate, Creepy Stalkerguy’ taken?”)
    We’d agreed on a fee. I’d interviewed him and learned that he was a high-school teacher, the middle of three children from St. Louis, that he’d