Dylan’s issue with this seemingly idyllic life was its stagnancy. Every day he knew that the yellow school bus would pick him up at 8:05. He would pull into school at 8:16 and the bell would ring at 8:20. School was interesting enough, at least history class was, but the rest of the day was spent listening to bored teachers drone on about boring topics, of which the bored kids had no interest. Dylan spent his time drawing on his Converse, looking out the window, and full on staring at Bethenny Wilder.

Bethenny was a quiet girl with a shocking mane of curly red hair and lips the color of a ripe peach. Bethenny’s dad worked with Dylan’s dad, so they had been to each others houses here and there for bbq’s and poker nights with their families. Bethenny was different from the other kids. Not just because she was drop dead gorgeous, but because she dreamed of a life outside Midwest, USA. She read books about the Venetian canals, bicycle culture in Amsterdam, high-speed subways in Japan and homemade wine in Greece. She watched cooking shows on PBS and could change a tire. Bethenny was the real deal, the full package, the sun breaking through the clouds of a gloomy day, and… a lesbian.

Bethenny swore to Dylan that if she liked boys, he would be number one on her list. But, alas. So it came to be that this six foot tall, conventionally handsome artistic boy who loved history forged a friendship with the 5’2” spectacularly smart and beautiful queer woman. Where Dylan lacked the physical relationship he craved from Bethenny, he gained a worldview for which he had been too bored, or ignorant, to look. Bethenny would be the first person that Dylan told about his fluid sexual preferences, and Dylan would be the first person Bethenny told of her abuse as a child. They would get their ears and nipples pierced together, and take their first trip overseas together to celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico City. Their average high school in their average hometown in middle America set the stage for the spectacularly lush lives they would lead.

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Ellen and Stacey bonded instantly over their shared experiences as new extensions in this multi-cultural heap of a family. Ellen’s boyfriend and Stacey’s husband came from a big, Greek immigrant family. Ellen was Chinese, Stacey was Irish.

The differences could not have been more vast (Stacey had tried her hand at an authentic Greek pastitsio, which her mother in law promptly dismissed with a scoff and a nod; Ellen had brought Greek cookies but apparently they were from the “wrong” bakery) between Ellen, Stacey and this big, beautiful family.

Ellen and Stacey exchanged numbers and kept in touch. Stacey made Ellen feel included and safe, and to be honest, Ellen had no idea what she gave Stacey. Maybe Stacey was just a kind person. Maybe they were just two women who enjoyed the beautiful things in life like a great pie, beautiful flowers, and homemade pasta.

Stacey was 39 when her cancer came back. She had battled breast cancer in years prior, but had been in remission long enough to have a beautiful six year old son who was the apple of her eye. Ellen found out and was sad, but she had the luxury of not knowing enough about cancer at the time to realize how bad the recurrence was.

The cancer spread to Stacey’s bones and her brain. Stacey’s husband (Ellen’s now fiancé’s stepmom’s nephew) knew the Ellen had a flexible work schedule and asked if she could come spend time with Stacey some afternoons because Stacey had a bit of trouble walking.

It is a testament to work burnout, selfishness, intentional avoidance, compartmentalization and childhood trauma that Ellen still did not know this was the end of her friend Stacey’s road.

They sat in Stacey’s condo day after day, talking about their families, love, heartbreak, fear, food, and her son’s upcoming birthday party. None of these topics were discussed in a Joan Didion, deep life reflection sense. They were just two women who had a passion for life and love. They shopped for party decorations. They discussed the fact that Ellen’s family did not approve of her fiance, and Stacey told her it was all going to be okay. Stacey was seeing double. Ellen still had no idea that her friend was dying.

Ellen convinced Stacey to smoke a joint, because Stacey had no appetite and pain throughout her body. Ellen rejoiced when Stacey smoked, ate her favorite Thai noodles and laughed that she felt great.

About three weeks later, Ellen’s fiancé’s stepmom sent a text to the family to get down to the hospital to say goodbye.

Ellen did the reading at Stacey’s funeral in front of hundreds of people and despite her career as a local news reporter who spoke in public for a living, Ellen’s voice cracked swiftly and deeply.

Years later, that six year old son was in college. Ellen’s now husband’s stepmom’s nephew (Stacey’s widower) had remarried. Ellen’s family came around to her husband, just as Stacey said they would. Ellen knew Stacey was an angel wrapped in light and love and glitter, eating fruit pie in heaven. Ellen missed those last, oblivious afternoons.

Mandy liked nice things. Who doesn’t! Mandy grew up pretty privileged, got a Cartier eternity ring for her college graduation and had too many Tiffany high school presents to count. Sure, she didn’t get an Audi when she turned 16 (kids shouldn’t have nice cars, you’ll be fine with a Chevy Equinox) but that was fine. She had plenty of friends with luxury rides.

What no one thinks about or factors in, is that what you want at 22 is not necessarily what you want at 42. Mandy did, in fact, marry the man of her (parents’) dreams. Jake was a hedge fund manager who made enough to afford Mandy with the most beautiful house in the Southport Corridor of Chicago. Their kids were perfectly coiffed and attended Blaine Elementary; a public school, but one of the best in the city. They took vacations during Spring and Winter breaks, Mandy only worked out in Alo matching sets, and although she did not have a 9-5 job, Mandy drove a stylish white Audi Q7 solely for school pickup and drop-off. Jake was handsome and a great provider, but Mandy could not help but feel so stuck in her daily routine of school drop-off, workout, Whole Foods run, school pickup, after school activities, dinner, bedtime, repeat.

It felt like Mandy might feel more fulfilled if Jake cared about making her feel emotionally secure, but it seemed more and more like Jake prioritized “providing” over “providing” Mandy with compliments and encouragement.

And, it should not be ignored, that Mandy was no shrinking violet. Why are we only talking about Jake? Mandy graduated from U Penn with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and got her MBA from the Northwestern Kellogg School of Business. This is where she and Jake met, in fact, but no one ever brought that up. Mandy’s lot in this world was to be Jake’s trophy wife, and perfect mommy to Christina, Bella and Gianna.

The day Mandy’s heart broke was the day Gianna (five years old, brain of a 23 year old) asked, “Why does Mommy have to wear leggings and buy food all day while Daddy gets to dress up and go talk to fancy people?” Mandy did not have the heart to tell little Gianna that Mommy didn’t have to wear leggings, she chose too. Er, “chose” to. Did Mandy ever really choose this life?

Mandy started an Instagram page that she titled “Mandyhood,” where she described the daily foibles of motherhood and coupled them with shrewd economic tips for maximizing savings and creating financial opportunities. Mandy soon garnered 750,000 followers, a book deal, and an international following. Soon, she was traveling for book tours and lectures and was interviewed by Drew Barrymore and Kelly and Mark.

Gianna asked her, “Mommy, can I come?”

Dr. Hawkins’ gripe today was with the fact that Poppy had inadvertently booked a rhinoplasty for the day before Dr. Hawkins’ annual trip to the Galápagos Islands. Poppy tried to explain that she only did so because the patient was Mitzy Rae Chalmers, frequent patient and scion of the Chalmers banking dynasty.

4:59 p.m. Poppy had to be at her kids’ school by 5:15 to pick them up from aftercare. As Dr. Hawkins droned on about Mitzy’s entitlement, the new three star Michelin chef on his yacht and his wife’s complaints about his long work hours, Poppy could only think about whether she would make it in time to the school and whether she had set the ground beef out in the morning to thaw out for dinner.

5:01 p.m. Dr. Hawkins was telling Poppy about the new goggles he had purchased, which promised a fog-free, crystal clear snorkeling experience. He asked her why she seemed rushed. She apologized and said she wasn’t.

5:21 p.m. “I’m sorry Mrs. Carter, but we will have to deduct $6.00 from your account due to your being six minutes late to pick up the girls.” Great, no problem, Poppy thought, as she shoved her four daughters into their preferred booster seats.

5:31 p.m. Poppy’s husband Pete was out of town, per usual. Pete worked in logistics for United Airlines and was out of town 50% of the month. Poppy had, in fact, forgotten to take out the beef to thaw. “MOM I’M HUNGRY WHAT IS FOR DINNER???” “MOM, ELLIE JUST HIT ME!!!” “MOM, CAMDEN BROKE MY PENCIL!!!!”

5:45 p.m. Poppy dissociated while stirring yellow macaroni and cheese powder into a pot of boiled noodles. Her girls were screaming and her wine glass of wine was empty. Their dog Biscuit had peed on the carpet in the foyer. It was at that moment that Pete texted from Houston “On my way to dinner! Miss my girls!”

It was sometime after 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday night, while her daughters quarreled and Pete enjoyed a steak and three martini dinner in Houston, that Poppy dissociated and prayed for Dr. Hawkins’ stupid goggles to fog up harder than the San Francisco Bay.

Good job, hot husband and sweet daughter aside (not to mention Jen had a smokin’ hot body and made thousands of dollars a month on her side hustle, the “Cooking with Jen” Instagram page with 1M followers and a mention by Reese Witherspoon), Jen was racked with anxiety and depression. See, Jen grew up with a narcissistic mom and an utterly imbecilic dad, and no matter how much she excelled in life, she could not shake the feeling that she was absolutely undeserving, too fat, too short, too bossy, too… too much, to succeed.

Jen called her mom after work every Friday for their mandatory weekly check in. It was mandatory only on Jen’s side, because otherwise, she would be accused of being a horrible daughter, one who did not consider her mother’s needs, one who would rather watch her mother die than make a simple phone call.

Sure, Jen had a job, a family, a side hustle, a wellness regimen, friends, doctor appointments and PTA meetings but her mother NEEDED her and what kind of vile devil child ignores that?

Jen wished she could. She wished she could ignore her mother but she loved her. Jen, now a mother herself, knew that her mom had done her best. And if her best was fucking terrible, then, so be it. Jen’s own personal bests felt terrible in the moment. Lizzy wore mismatched socks to school. Jen’s husband hadn’t gotten laid in two weeks. Jen forgot to email the PTA flier that she promised she would. Jen was awful at being a 45 year old wife and mom.

Or was that just the voice in her head?

So it was that Mary and Eleanor found themselves at Beauty Luxe, the chain with the bright colors and absolutely vital accoutrements ranging from Chanel Les Beiges foundation to Brazilian Bum Bum Cream. Mary needed a lip liner, and Eleanor would rather hang out with her friend than waste another day on the couch.

But Eleanor, Mary’s tried and true bestie in this manic roller coaster called life, is not the costar of this story. It’s Dylan, beautiful Dylan. Dylan was not beautiful in a McDreamy sort of way, but rather in a celestial fairy angel on Earth sprinkling magic dust on everything he touches, sort of way.

Serendipity brought Mary to the Beauty Luxe on the one day a week that Dylan worked there as a beauty representative. Knowledgable on all things from lip plumping to aging skin to national politics, Mary and Dylan fell in platonic love over jars of StriVectin TL Advanced Tightening Neck Cream and a shared dismay over the trajectory of the American politik.

Dylan had bright white, straight teeth, beautiful green eyes with the whites dyed royal blue (cheeky, emo, provocative or merely a creative touch; it really did not matter), a long lithe physique draped in a tied-black cardigan under which were layered a tasteful handful of rosary beads. Dylan radiated warmth and glitter and intelligence, with a tinge of a sad past life.

Mary immediately opened up about her aging, her career, her political beliefs and her dreams for a career that aligned with her morals and her ethos. Dylan listened, laughed, sighed, commiserated, maintained eye contact and shared his own personal experiences. Dylan read the bible as a revolt against current political issues, but he loathed organized religion. Dylan preferred a great cup of iced coffee from a local cafe to Starbucks. Dylan thought L.A. was a hard place to lead a sustainable life, in light of the omnipresent pull of sex, drugs and fame.

Mary got Dylan’s number, spend $378 on beauty products and left feeling buoyant. Coffee at the local cafe together coming soon.

Said aunt dies after a long, happy life and wills the popular Nancy Meyers-esque bakery. The bakery is, naturally, in either Santa Barbara or Ojai, and its favorite customer is the recently widowed financier with a thick head of hair and an even thicker bank account. Marianna opts to leave her position as a senior partner at Latham Watkins in New York City to refresh her life after years of being a cog in the corporate machine. Marianna meets the Recently Widowed Financier, they fall in love and live happily ever after in a mid-century modern villa that overlooks the Pacifc Ocean. Think, lattes in Adirondacks on their deck, late nights in front of the fire in their bedroom.

The problem is that Marianna has no long lost aunt. She does not live in New York City and she is not a senior partner. Marianna is an Assistant Public Defender in Baker County, Nebraska. And if there are any financiers in Baker County, she sure hasn’t met them. Marianna does know a widower, Stanley, but he is 76, lives in a trailer and has tufts of hair in his ear as lush as the corn in August.

Marianna’s love life is, in fact, less Nancy Meyers and more Michael Myers. There was Richie, her college sweetheart, who broke up with her by sending his new girlfriend (Kate, tattoo artist) to her home to return her curling iron and favorite hoodie. Then there was George. George was promising, he shared her Greek heritage and had a great job as a veterinarian at the local animal hospital. What she did not know for the two years they dated was that the ketamine intended for his equine patients was in fact going up his nose at an alarming rate. She only found out when she caught him passed out behind his desk covered in broken open plastic capsules and brownish powder.

Nate was Marianna’s current paramour, a married bank teller with a boring marriage and an even more boring demeanor. It said a lot that Nate’s worst quality was not his adultery but rather than fact that he considered Applebee’s suitable for a special occasion. The problem was that Nate was cute, and Marianna was a 43 year old woman with needs.

Marianna thought about all this as she parked her 2014 Jeep Cherokee in the Baker County Courthouse parking lot. She juggled her lukewarm coffee and sensible, worn tote into the courthouse and said hello to the portly sheriff who ogled her tits every morning when she walked in. Well, at least men still found her attractive.

She got to her desk, ripped open a granola bar and got ready for her bench trial, a retail theft out of the local Walmart. If she was lucky, she would get assigned Judge Randall, who found everyone not guilty. Fingers crossed, it would be a great day.

At least she had finally made it to The Sands, the wellness retreat she insisted on booking with her cheating husband’s credit card after she found those gawdy, red lace panties in his briefcase. That intellectually lacking galoot tried to say they were a gift for Estelle, despite being unwrapped and twisted around his stupid Mont Blanc pen.

Estelle kicked off her Hermes slides and sat down on the freshly pressed Frette linens. Her head was pounding. The champagne on Delta was poison compared to the 1985 Dom Perignon on the Gulfstream. She longed for a massage and wondered for the 100th time that minute when her Goyard bags would arrive to her room.

A knock at the door. A 6’2”, bronzed, statue of a man with a serpent tattoo winding its way from his muscled shoulder down to his meaty wrist. Her Goyard bags, a silver tray with champagne glass and a knowing look.

His nameplate read Gustavo, and he was the most delicious domestic servant she had ever laid her eyes on. 30 minutes later, they were nude in her private plunge pool, her Cartier bracelets digging into his sinewy shoulder blades while he kissed her neck.

Estelle thought maybe, just maybe, this would truly be a wellness retreat.

Harper didn’t seek validation but she sure needed it. The marriage started out as most do; blissful nights out together sharing laughs and observations over dry Cabernet and good Italian food. Tropical vacations saturated in sun, sand and sex. Home purchases and the accompanying joy over designing their home bar, their dream kitchen and, of course, bedrooms for the beautiful 2.5 children that would surely follow.

Eight years later, as Harper drank her fifth glass of wine of the day while bottle-feeding her colicky baby, she wondered what went wrong. She wondered if they had actually been fated and if the wine had tasted as good. Now that she thought about it, was the sex even that good? She had numerous lovers before her husband but as the female mind often does, hers had attached a sort of fantastical eroticism to her husband’s 200 extra pounds and painfully lacking sexual prowess. After all, she loved this man. She loved him with all her heart. He was the father of their beautiful children.

Harper spent her days feeding, cleaning, washing and despairing while her husband’s abject denial of her anxieties drove her further into the bottle. He was, undeniably and overwhelmingly living his best life, enjoying that home bar with their mutual friends late into the night, sometimes so late that he felt it his duty to fall into the arms of the women who thought that tying one on with a married man in the home where his wife and infant children lay sleeping was peak reality.

The 11 a.m. text message to his phone, which sat unlocked and open on their quartz kitchen island while he slept the sleep of babies, did not even come as a surprise, truth be told. “Thanks for last night 😘😘❤️❤️ can’t wait to see you again soon xxx.” It was so painfully cliche and idiotic. It was at that moment that Harper knew she could not live with this heinous, emotionally vapid creature one day longer.

Six months later Harper was in her new house in her new neighborhood with her two beautiful children, living day by day with the ramifications of co-parenting and living single. She had made a new best friend in her caring and vivacious neighbor and they spent night after night laughing and judging and commiserating.

Harper knew that fate was not in the details, it was only found when you looked at the landscape as a whole. Like pointillism, the details were nothing without the finished product.

Nevermind the fact that she was at a prestigious “smart kid” camp at Harvard University for the summer. She was in her sexual prime, finally having emerged from a bookish, introverted freshman year into a girl giving her first blow job at smart kid camp (Matt Parsons, the genius son of California state senator John Parsons, had the greenest eyes, but he also still slept on Flintstones sheets and got cookies mailed to him from the senator’s wife each Monday).

Piper does not remember how she got to her bed but she realized it was not her bed when she woke up with a twig stuck to her cheek, and realized she had, in fact, passed out in the bushes outside. How had she gone from the dorm bathroom to the front yard? Why did she have no shoes on? Oh my god, had Matt seen her?!

At 8 a.m. sharp, Piper was in the dining hall housing powdered eggs and black coffee. She felt good, considering. Matt smiled at her from across the room. Her shorts felt loose, probably from vomiting up dinner. And she had her favorite class that morning, Byzantine History. The class was made better by the fact that her best friend Stevie was in it. Stevie was everything she wasn’t; gay, fabulous, carefree, and vegetarian. Stevie was also everything she was; a smart kid who drank and drugged with reckless abandon because what else was there to do?

Stevie got to class at 8:55 a.m. and handed Piper a Peet’s Coffee cup filled with Smirnoff and Mountain Dew. They sat next to each other, passed notes, learned about Byzantine history and consumed enough vodka to feel like it would, in fact, be a great day.