Pretty Bitches by Lizzie Skurnick & Rebecca Traister

Author:Lizzie Skurnick & Rebecca Traister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

The next month I instigate the end of the relationship with the sailor. Something about all the others I have heard about, including the “crazy one,” makes me think he’s in the whole business of hunting and gathering women for something other than love. I put it to him more subtly than this, but I’ve cracked the narrative of our mutual attraction.

He puts a fresh profile up on an online dating site while we’re still discussing terms. I wanted to be proven wrong, so I’m sad. Then he ghosts me. I miss my funny, smart, charming friend who seemed so intently interested in every aspect of me. Naively, I had hoped he might do some self-reflection and we could try again. Honestly, I feel a little crazy. I mean, was it me, or was it him?

When I reach out to the “crazy one,” who is easy to find on social media, I am conscious that the sailor would think me crazy, too, for crossing this social barrier to investigate how crazy she may be. I call anyway.

It’s only been a few months since they were together, she says. She expected to hear from him after that terrible night, and when she didn’t, she told her friends he must have met someone new. Must have replaced her.

Together we are a forensic team reconstructing a narrative of an emotional criminal with a true modus operandi: meet at a party, send texts before he’s left the party to establish contact, social media friend requests across all platforms. Full-court press. First date ends with him carrying woman to a guest room in his house for consummation—we puzzle over this choice of room—then lots of talk about the boat and sailing and where he wants to take her. And me. Us.

The night of the knife? That was less than twenty-four hours before I met him. They had been to the city’s art walk, made out on the street, posed for photos in a black-and-white photo booth, and then headed back separately to his house for dinner. He’d told her to wait for him while he got groceries. He was considerate that way. The knife was on the counter because they were cooking together. Salmon. Strawberries. Asparagus. I am nodding, remembering eating this same meal.

What went wrong with them? She is still puzzling over that. He told her that he thought they should decide where this was going—were they going to be together forever, or just be friends?—and she said she was just following his lead. A muscle in his cheek began to pulse. He was mad. Maybe he wanted her to be the one who would say, “Let’s be together forever”? Anyway, he wanted her to leave.

She suggested that this was sudden and odd, although she did not say, “That’s crazy.” She pointed to the photos on the counter, of them kissing, from that night. The man running the photo booth had told the sailor, when he bought the prints right then and there, that

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