The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner Page A

closet and emptied my desk, packing up all those extra umbrellas and bottles of Advil and the dozens of scripts I’d printed out and studied and marked up with Post-its and notes. I’d loaded the box in the back of my car, cleaned off my computer’s desktop and erased the cookies on the hard drive, then gotten behind the wheel and driven off the lot. I’d tossed my ID badge into the trash can at the Poquito Más on Ventura on my way home, knowing I’d never be back.
    “What happened?” cried my grandmother as I walked intothe living room with the cardboard box in my arms. I hadn’t told her I was leaving. She’d only want to know why.
    “Tough day at the office,” I said. I locked my bedroom door behind me, stowed the box in my closet, and lay facedown on the comforter. It was too humiliating to think of, except in brief snatches, but even casual reflection showed me my mistake. I’d imagined myself as one of the normal people, the ones who walked off toward their happy endings in the warm glow of the sunset, a girl who could get a guy like Rob. Clearly I’d been wrong. How had I gotten it so backward? How had I fooled myself into believing that he would want me, that he thought of me as anything besides a friend? The tears came then, scalding hot on the one cheek that could feel them. Being rejected was one thing. Being shamed the way Rob had shamed me, being passed over in a way that let everyone I worked with know exactly how foolish I’d been, how far I’d overreached, was a pain I hadn’t begun to imagine.
    “Ruthie, what’s wrong?” My grandmother stood in the doorway, apparently afraid to come closer. “You look terrible. Does something hurt?” It had been years since my last operation, but she knew how to deal with that physical pain, with ice packs and Advil, with hot baths and mugs of whiskey-spiked tea and urgent, whispered telephone calls to whatever physician or surgeon was currently in charge of my care. She could handle illness and surgeries. She was not equipped to deal with heartache. At least, that’s what I thought as she crossed the room and perched on the edge of my bed. I heard the swish of silk as she crossed her legs beneath her lavender dressing gown.
    “It’s that Rob,” she said, and didn’t wait for my answer.
    Grandma knew I’d been expecting him for the party, the night our episode had aired. She’d seen me pacing the apartment, jumping every time the doorbell rang, staring out the window, watching for his little black coupe to pull into the drive. I’dgone to sleep with my phone in my hand, checking it obsessively throughout the night, half-believing I’d get a call or a text from a hospital or the police somewhere, telling me that he’d crashed his car or suffered an out-of-nowhere heart attack or been the victim of some bizarre accident or crime. Certainly he’d talked about it enough. Mortality, especially his own, was one of Rob’s favorite subjects. “Call me crazy,” he’d begin, at whatever dive bar we’d stopped at for after-work wings and beers. He would wait obligingly until I’d said, “Crazy,” before continuing, “But I just know I’m going to die in a way that’s going to be in all the papers. Like, I’ll be in a hot tub by myself one night—”
    “Don’t say it,” I interrupted, having an idea as to where this might be going.
    “And I’ll just think, ‘Hey! Maybe I’ll stick my winkie in the outflow tube.’”
    “Your winkie?”
    “My man-gland. My throbbing member. My—”
    “Okay, okay, I’ve got it.” I was blushing, and I hoped he couldn’t see.
    “And then,” he continued, sprinkling salt over the foam on his beer, “I’ll be trapped, and I’ll drown. Death by Masturbation. And the neighbors will find my decomposing corpse, with my winkie still stuck in the hot tub, and the next thing you know, I’m in News of the Weird. ”
    “Simple solution,” I told him.
    “What’s that?”
    “Just promise yourself that