Emily's Reasons Why Not Read Free Page B

your twenties good-bye with cake and vodka, did you?” Reilly holds up a bottle of Absolut Citron. We all head into the kitchen.
    Reilly starts to mix cocktails as we sit at the breakfast nook to eat strawberry birthday cake and drink Citron martinis. “What’d you think of Dr. D.?” Grace asks.
    “Why do you need to pay some stranger a hundred-plus dollars an hour when we have a licensed therapist among the ranks?” Reilly volleys at me, referring to Grace.
    Grace adds in her therapist voice, “Friends aren’t supposed to counsel other friends. We’re too personally attached. Besides, she stopped listening to me somewhere between Jeff and Dennis.”
    “We do it all day,” Reilly counters.
    “Repressive male-bashing is not necessarily healthy counseling,” I retort.
    “Stick together we must!” Reilly laughs.
    We raise our glasses and Grace toasts, “To our girl. May she find a man to love her as much as we do.”
    Our glasses clink at the rim.
    “Happy birthday, Em,” they say in unison.
    We pat Sammy good-bye, filling him with enough love so he knows we’re coming back. At least love between people and their dogs is still intact. Sammy wags his tail as if satisfied, at least for the moment, that the laundry is still unfolded and inside.
    Reilly crawls into the back of my car and I notice a hickey on the back of her neck.
    “I see you’re dating Denny again,” I say as I shut the door behind her and lower the top.
    “I wouldn’t call it dating,” Reilly rebuts. “More like exercise with a hint of heartache.”
    “And you now understand why we shouldn’t take relationship advice from our friends.” Grace looks back at Reilly.
    I am always the driver. Call it control, call it love for the Mustang, but mainly call it the security that I can leave wherever we are whenever I want.
    I turn on the ignition. It dies. I pump the gas, turn the key again, and rev once as we embark on the unlikely adventure of a Hollywood fund-raiser on girls’ night out.
    “Lemme know if Dr. D. tells you anything we don’t know already,” Reilly says as she puts on her seat belt.
    Grace pipes in, “As a licensed therapist I will tell you one thing for sure. Deep down we already know what therapy is trying to teach us way before we ever go in. We know when to leave a shitty relationship. We know when men are bad for us. We know what it means when they don’t call. We just need to pay someone to tell us before we believe it.” She smiles, satisfied, as if she has just changed the lightbulb in a dark room.
    Grace is the friend that I know is my ticket to heaven. She saves everyone from homeless crack addicts to her perpetually single girlfriends. She is the one who comes over when I am PMSing and drowning in a single, bottle of pinot, self-pity party. She reminds me that indeed there is love out there for me, and on a good day she can be pretty convincing.
    “Go ahead and smile,” Reilly shoots back in at Grace. “But if you’re so smart, why’d you take on one hundred thousand dollars in student loans to get ‘Doctor’ before your name so you could make forty thousand dollars a year counseling junkies and freeloaders? Where’s the fucking sense in that?” Reilly blows smoke from her Marlboro Light into the night air.
    “They’re homeless, and I am trying to make them be productive citizens.” Grace shakes her head.
    “Save it for the pearly gates,” Reilly says as she finishes her smoke.
    “Em, is Josh coming out with us?” Grace changes the subject.
    “Hot, rich, loving, great taste …,” Reilly says. “Such a waste of a perfectly good penis.”
    “No, he has some new boyfriend. They’re going to some new club in Boy’s Town. Although he did say, for my birthday, that he would be my donor if I needed to breed in the next decade.”
    “You could do worse,” Reilly smiles at me.
    “I think I actually want the penetration.”
    In reality, I don’t think having a donor backup plan is such a bad