Smart Girl by Rachel Hollis

her straight man, and without him there to keep her in check, she started to implode.
    “I tried—I tried so hard to help her, but it was early in college, and I was too focused on my own life to pay much attention. A few years ago it got . . . bad. I’ve had her in care ever since.” He looked at me suddenly. “It’s a state-of-the-art facility, not an asylum or anything. It’s like a five-star hotel . . . only with orderlies and psychiatric care.” He tried to smile then, but it didn’t get anywhere near his eyes. He took another drink.
    “Why didn’t you tell Brody about this? She’s his mother too.”
    For a single moment his eyes flooded with tears, and I could feel his pain like my own.
    “She wasn’t always like this. She used to be so . . . special. And when she started to get really bad, she begged me not to tell anyone. Brody hasn’t spoken to her since the divorce, and neither has my dad. I don’t blame them for that, just like they don’t blame me for still choosing to have a relationship with her. She didn’t want them coming around out of pity.” He looked out over the dark room. “I didn’t tell anyone, because she asked me not to.”
    The words broke my heart. I wanted to hug him so badly my fingers tingled with the need to do it. Instead I let my head fall on his shoulder, as if we were old friends instead of people having their first-ever conversation.
    “So why tell me?” I asked.
    My head rose and fell with his sigh.
    “Because you’re not real.”
    I chuckled softly.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because you took care of me,” he said conversationally. “Nobody ever takes care of me, so you can’t be real. I’ve had too much to drink, and so I imagined a fairy with big brown eyes and wild hair so I had something beautiful to think about it.”
    I almost choked on my words, trying my hardest not to break the spell of this moment by getting emotional. I tried to keep my tone light.
    “You believe in fairies?”
    His lips brushed the top of my head before he whispered into my hair.
    “I do now.”
    I fell in love with Liam Ashton at that exact moment.

    Liam doesn’t say much when he drops me off in front of Tosh’s house, except to point out that my brother’s car is in the driveway and he is clearly at home. I just thank Liam for the ride and walk slowly up the steps to the front door.
    I wanted to press him into talking more, but I worry that, given all the emotions I unleashed in him today, I won’t like the results of that particular conversation. I hadn’t meant to bring up that night, especially since we’ve never acknowledged that it happened at all. We sat on the floor for the longest time as he told me all about his mother. I guessed he’d never told the truth to anyone, and because he was locked in the unreality of the night and the moment, it felt safe to tell me. But as the time ticked by, he seemed to come back to himself, and just like in Cinderella , the magic was lost.
    When I saw him at Max’s birthday party months later, he didn’t even acknowledge me, though I caught him staring again and again. When we finally spoke at a dodgeball game, he pretended like it was the first time we’d met. I kept staring at him that day, trying to figure out what his game was or if he’d been so drunk that he genuinely didn’t remember our conversation. But then we went to breakfast as a group, and he was all smiles, congenial and telling jokes. Nobody but me noticed how often he touched that scar on his hand.

Chapter SIX
    “Why are we doing this?” I demand as I clomp along beside Max.
    She’s running down the street in workout gear, looking like a gazelle. Beside her, Landon looks like jogging Barbie. I feel like a disjointed mule. Running is not my love language.
    “Because you said you wanted to get in shape,” Landon calls across Max to me.
    “No,” I grunt, barely able to speak over my lungs threatening to implode in my chest. This is what