The Blonde Theory Read Free Page B

wasn’t as smart as I’d thought.)
    The other three girls had moved to Manhattan when they were twenty-two, after we had all graduated from Ohio State. Meg had moved into a tiny, dingy one-bedroom in Brooklyn to pursue a career in magazine journalism. Emmie had moved in with Meg for a year, her old Rainbow Brite sleeping bag stretched out on Meg’s living room floor, to try out for every Broadway show possible. Jill had studied interior design and had somehow moved directly into a management position at Lila McElroy, a hip, prestigious downtown firm, her first year out of school.
    I had visited on weekends but hadn’t made the permanent move to Manhattan until I was twenty-four, after I had graduated from Harvard Law, making our little foursome complete once again.
    Now we were all living our dreams—or at least an adjusted version of them. I had a thriving career that I loved. Meg, who had originally wanted to be a writer for
The New Yorker,
was instead a senior editor at
Mod,
a trendy women’s magazine, which seemed to fit her better anyhow, since it allowed her the opportunity to give young women advice every month—and there was nothing Meg liked better than dispensing advice. She had married her high school sweetheart, Paul Amato, an electrician, who had come to New York with her. She kept her maiden name.
    Emmie, a tiny, adorable blonde with pixie-cut curls, had struck out on Broadway, had a string of roles in off-Broadway productions, and finally landed a role on the soap opera
The Rich and the Damned
two years ago. Once a month or so, she was approached by a starstruck housewife from Boise or Minneapolis or Salt Lake City who recognized her and asked for her autograph, which thrilled her to no end. She also had an endless string of adoring men who were enchanted with her status as a C-list celebrity. She had collected no less than a dozen marriage proposals during the thirteen years she had lived in New York.
    And Jill, whose mother had repeated the mantra
Marry well and before you’re thirty, and you’ll never, ever have to worry
in lieu of a lullaby, every night before tucking her into her pale pink canopied bed, had done the only thing she’d ever really aspired to do anyhow: married a wealthy doctor with a penthouse on the Upper East Side. (Although I should add that she hadn’t gotten married until the age of thirty-three, somewhat violating the mantra. She had really been in desperation mode in the two years between the time she hit the big three-zero and the time she met Alec.)
    So maybe the girls
did
know what they were talking about. After all, I was the only walking romantic disaster among us. I was so used to making faces at them when they tried to give me advice that I never really listened.
    “So I added it up last night, and I’ve figured it out,” I said to no one in particular, trying to look as if I thought the whole concept of my romantic meltdown was hilarious. “I’ve been on thirty-seven unsuccessful first dates in the last three years. I think this is a new record. Would one of you like to call the
Guinness Book
?”
    “Stop being so negative, Harper,” Meg said gently. “The right guy will come along. Just be yourself.”
    “Easy for you to say,” I grumbled. “You married a guy who’s been in love with you since we were sixteen. And you—” I turned to Jill. “You married a doctor with a penthouse, just like you wanted. Even before you met him, guys were falling for you all the time. And you—” I focused my attention on Emmie, who was squirming uncomfortably. “Well, I don’t even know where to start with you. You’re on a date every night of the week with a different guy.”
    “Not
every
night,” Emmie said after a moment. At least she had the decency to blush. I sighed and looked at the three of them: Emmie with her perfectly golden Shirley Temple curls, perfectly perky little nose, and perfectly tanned skin; Jill with her sleek dyed golden hair, Hermès