The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund by Jill Kargman

confidence, the works. We are going to show that bitch Sherry Von that she was wrong— plenty of guys would kill to be with you. I will be your social quarterback. And while our loser ex-husbands are watching the NFL, we will be making our own plays.”
    â€œKiki, I really appreciate that, but I’m such a mess right now, I don’t even know where to begin.”
    â€œI do,” she said. “Repeat after me, one hundred times: Nina Ricci short yellow dress. Nina Ricci short yellow dress. Nina Ricci short yellow dress . . .”
    I knew she was referencing Reese Witherspoon’s post-divorce Golden Globes dress, which she rocked on the red carpet, proving philandering Mr. Philippe a total raging idiot. That frock was a symbol to all divorcées that they could take an emotional beating and still land on their five-inch Roger Viviers.
    â€œShe did it. We can do it. I don’t have a kid, so I can be in the driver’s seat. You just work on pampering yourself, building yourself back up. I will take care of everything.”
    â€œKiki, I love you. What would I do without you?”
    â€œListen, it fucking sucks. You’re basically in hell right now, express train, zero stops. There’s gonna be crying and more crying until your tear ducts look like the Sahara. But you have to wake up and breathe in and out and get through those heinous days. It will obviously take a while until you feel whole enough to even function let alone date. And then even when you’re ready, every bad date, you’ll be sitting in the back of that taxi crying. But every good one—whether it works out or not—will give you a glimmer of what your life could be like. Romantic and exciting. I know I made the right choice leaving Hal. You have more to work through because you didn’t have a slow deterioration like we did. But trust me, you will triumph over this noxious toxic sludge of a moment. You will push through it and fucking shine on the other side. It’s like that river of shit the guy crawls through in The Shawshank Redemption . You’ll cry and barf and get through this horrible tunnel and then you will be free of all this pain. I swear to you.”
    I just prayed she was right. Because at that moment it felt like a thousand football fields of misery ahead of me.
    The next few months brought ten chopped-down trees’ worth of tissues, long talks on the phone with my only other divorced friend, Natasha, incessant meetings with lawyers, a battery of Tim’s assistants packing up his things for the Carlton House on Madison Avenue (where Wall Street titans shack up post-divorce), and a planned date to sign final marriage-dissolution documents. My heartbroken father flew into town to console me and help me through navigating my prenup and guide me to take the high road and ask for what was only fair. While the Empire State was “no fault,” Tim’s whore-bangage couldn’t help me at all; in fact, it was the same legal consequences as if I had been banging my trainer at David Barton. My dad stayed up with me into the night, wiping my tears. “Honey,” he said, “let’s think this through. I know you’re hurt, I know you’re angry, and while part of you might want to make him pay, you don’t want to make Miles pay emotionally. Your mom and I never had any of this kind of lifestyle, and we were fine.”
    And my dad was always right. Like my mom, he was a calmer, nobler soul than I, who wanted to gut Tim for all he was worth . . . but it wasn’t worth it. Not for karma, or even Miles, but for the fact that I was too tired for the fight. I didn’t feel like rolling up my sleeves to duke it out. Even though I was blood drunk for some kind of revenge, I didn’t want to punish Miles by suing for custody, so I let him share fifty-fifty with weekends and Wednesday evenings. Financially, because of our ironclad prenup, I was hardly