F*ck Marriage(36)

“I’ve always been intimidated by you,” I tell him.

“What?” He laughs—a short, bewildered laugh—like he can’t imagine why.

“You’ve always seemed older than the rest of us. More mature. I’m thirty years old, and I still feel like a little girl when I’m around you.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that.” He frowns and now I laugh.

“We were getting trashed and skipping class while you were already working on your master’s. By the time we moved into our first apartment, you were already buying your first company. We got married; you made your first million. I don’t even know why you hung out with us, you were always on a different level.”

“Come on…” His dimples are out now as he shakes his head at me.

Whenever his dimples show I have to look away or I stare.

“Remember the water park?”

I laugh. How could I forget? I’d been dating Woods a little over nine months, and things were starting to get serious. Six of us decided we needed some well-deserved fun—thus the water park. Satcher had just been accepted into his master’s program and we were celebrating. The day was bright and so were our moods. Satcher smuggled in a bottle of cheap vodka that we passed around, the kind that hits you hard in the back of the throat and makes you gag. My memories are blurry: I remember having three shots to Satcher’s six. I remember standing in line for the big slide, joking with him about his lack of a tan, when his eyes suddenly went blank. He’d opened his mouth, his comeback ready, when he looked at me and said: “I don’t feel right.” The next thing I knew he was falling backwards, his face white. The lifeguard called the ambulance and we all stood wide-eyed until they came for him, loading him onto a stretcher. Satcher spent a night in the hospital for dehydration and exhaustion. We had no idea there was something wrong, that he was overworked or otherwise ... because Satcher always had his shit together. It goes to show that you can never tell who’s struggling or not.

“That wasn’t your fault,” I say. “We made you drink too much and you had a lot on your plate.”

“As I recall, I was the one who brought the vodka. You’re forgetting that I was just as reckless as the rest of you. I was just ambitious in my spare time.”

“Understatement.”

He shrugs.

“We got offtrack. You always do that—steer the conversation in a different direction when you get uncomfortable.” He reaches up and holds my upper arms in his hands, squeezing a little, and I stare into his face. “You’re going to figure this out.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

“Because you want to be happy. You may not know it yet, but it’s why you came back.”

“I came back for revenge,” I say flatly.

“Yes, because you think that will make you happy.”

I don’t have anything to say to that. I suppose he could be right. I bite my lip and squeeze my eyes shut.

“Good night, Satch. Safe travels home, yeah? Let me know how your mom is doing.” I make for the door and this time he doesn’t stop me.





Chapter Eighteen





F*ck Marriage launches on the Monday after we get back. My first post is the most honest thing I’ve ever written, and for that reason, I lock myself in my office, turn off the lights, and drink half a bottle of wine for breakfast. I’m sitting in the dark when Loren slips into my office doing a victory twerk. I try to hide the bottle under my desk, but she points out that my teeth are stained red.

“What do you mean you haven’t checked?” Her face is incredulous as she pours some of my wine into her own Solo cup.

“I’m scared,” I admit.

She steps around my desk and leans over me to turn my monitor on. I can smell her shampoo, her hair still damp from her morning shower. I squeeze my eyes closed as she jiggles my mouse, summoning the screen to life.

“Look,” she commands.

I open one eye and then the other.

“Three thousand comments, Billie. Three thousand.”

My jaw drops.

“They. Are. Loving. It.”

I shove her away so I can get a look at the screen.

“Look.” I point to one of the comments.



This is unbelievably brave. Why don’t we have more blogs like this? Life is not perfect and we have hurt to conquer. Thank you, Billie!



“You published under Billie!” she says, surprised.

I shift in my seat uncomfortably, remembering the fight I had with Satcher on a public street. “Yeah, I guess I’m going back to that.”

Loren hugs me. “I’m so glad. Truly.”

We read through the rest of the comments, and by the time she leaves my office, we both have red teeth, and I’m on a high that has nothing to do with the wine I drank. I lean over my desk burying my head in my arms. It worked. It actually worked.

I haven’t seen Satcher since we got back. He sent me one text after he got home saying the lump in his mother’s breast was cancer. They’d caught it in time and she’d chosen to have a double mastectomy rather than just removing the cancer.

His plan is to work from his parents’ house until she is back on her feet. But he sends a huge bouquet to the office to congratulate me on the success of my new column. I’m buzzing like a pollen-high bee when Woods strolls in.