Smart Girl by Rachel Hollis Page B

stand up too.
    “You should ask Brody about it,” Max tells her.
    “I will.” Landon bites her lip again and nods. “It’s not that I haven’t known something happened in the past. I knew—I just didn’t know how to ask what it was. But it’s not your place to tell me. I get that. I’ll speak with him about it.”
    Max walks the few short steps to the car while awkwardness comes off her in waves. Landon’s voice halts our progress.
    “What’s her name?”
    Max pauses in between one motion and the next and then sighs in defeat. She looks down at her shoes and shakes her head slowly, clearly battling with herself on who she should be loyal to. It’s too late now, though. She’s stirred things up, and any woman can understand wanting to know at least the name of the ex with whom the relationship ended so badly nobody wants to talk about it. Particularly when that relationship apparently went down with the daughter of his father’s business partner.
    “Sloan,” Max says quietly. “Her name is Sloan.”

    Brody and Landon are flying to Texas tomorrow, so we all agreed to meet for drinks on Tuesday night. I’ve asked her several times whether or not she’s talked to him about whoever this Sloan creature is, and she’s told me repeatedly that she doesn’t feel like discussing it. She says she’s come to the decision that his past doesn’t affect their current relationship, and she seems genuinely sincere in the statement.
    “He’s had enough crazy ex-girlfriends hounding him about details of past relationships,” she tells me as we walk down the street to the bar. “I told him a long time ago that I couldn’t be upset about something that happened before I even met him, and I meant it. If he needs to talk to me about it, he will. Until then I’m not going to stir up a bad memory that isn’t currently affecting my life in any way.”
    We slip inside the lounge out of the cold.
    “Dude, you’re way more mature than I am,” I tell her as I pull off my jacket.
    She fluffs her perfect golden hair a few times and then throws me a wink. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    I fuss with my own hair and try to think of something truly shocking.
    “Um, I didn’t finish the third book in the All Souls trilogy.”
    Landon actually gasps and looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. She grasps my hand like I might be sick or something. “But you love those books!”
    “I love the first two. The truth is I think I love them too much. When the third one started to go off the rails, I couldn’t handle it, so I just stopped reading.”
    Landon shakes her head slowly back and forth. “What would Deborah Harkness say?”
    I return her look sincerely. “I hope I never have to find out.”
    She laughs so loudly that people turn in our direction to stare. I spot our group in the back corner.
    “Come on.” I nudge her ahead of me. “Let’s get some wine. This conversation about Matthew and Diana has upset me.”
    I follow her through the crowd to a long communal bar table where the usual suspects have gathered. Brody envelops her in a hug and then gives me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. I slide onto a barstool across from Taylor and Max and notice Malin talking up some random at the bar. I get her attention with a wave and pantomime glugging a bottle of something. She smiles and gives me a thumbs-up.
    “Did you just use my little sister as your waitress?” Max asks.
    “She’s young and sprightly,” I answer. “It’s good for her. Besides, I’m too tired to move. I spent all day yesterday on my feet watching a bunch of drunk actuaries dancing to a Neil Diamond cover band.”
    “Whose name is . . . ?” Taylor asks.
    “Love on the Rocks,” I tell them all with a grimace.
    “How did that event turn out?” Taylor asks at the same time Malin slides a glass of red wine in front of me.
    “What’s an actuary?” she asks before sipping her own drink.
    “An accountant without a sense of