The others murmured agreement.
Carrie leaned forward, elbows on the table. Maybe to lighten the mood, maybe because it felt like her turn.
"Okay," she said to Jen. "Your turn. What's your damage?"
Jen gave a short laugh. "My damage. Where do I start?" She pushed up the sleeves of her blouse, revealing the tattoos she'd started collecting in her thirties. A line of poetry on her left forearm, a small moth on her wrist, a half-sleeve of wildflowers she was still adding to. Her bleached-blond hair fell in a shaggy, layered cut that grazed her shoulders, a style that looked effortless but probably wasn't. Angular face, sharp cheekbones, silver rings stacked on her fingers. She was the one who'd never looked like the rest of them, even back at Rowan—always a little more interesting, a little harder to pin down.
"No affair. No divorce." She shrugged. "Just twenty years of waiting for something that never showed up."
She'd told them about deleting the apps. Said she was done looking. David, too—three years in her early thirties, the one who'd wanted to get married. But she'd never said why she ended it.
"I panicked." She touched the moth tattoo on her wrist. "Told myself he wasn't right, that something was missing, that I needed more time to figure out what I wanted." She paused. "So I ended it. Moved to a new city. Threw myself into work."
"What happened to him?" Olivia asked.
"Married someone else within two years. Three kids now. Looks happy in every photo I've ever accidentally seen." Jen exhaled. "I spent a long time telling myself I made the right call. That I would've been miserable. But honestly? I think I was just scared. And by the time I figured that out, it was too late."
She let it sit.
"Last month I went out with a guy who seemed perfect on paper. Divorced, no kids, runs his own architecture firm. Great texts. We met for dinner, and within ten minutes he's telling me how refreshing I am." She made air quotes. "He said he doesn't usually date women his own age. That most of them are too bitter, too desperate, too much baggage. But I seemed different."
"Unbelievable," Lori muttered.
"It gets better. He asked me—over appetizers—why I'd never been married. Said there must be something wrong with me if I'd made it to forty-five without anyone locking it down." A dry laugh. "Locking it down. Like I'm a car that keeps failing inspection."
"Please tell me you walked out," Carrie said.
"I should have. Instead I sat through the whole dinner because I'd already ordered the salmon and I was hungry." She rolled her eyes. "He texted the next day saying he had a great time and asking when he could see me again. No self-awareness. None."
"And before that?" Meredith asked.
"Before that was the guy who cried about his ex-wife for two hours. Before that was the one who asked if I'd ever considered freezing my eggs, 'just in case.' Before that was the investment banker who spent the whole dinner on his phone and then got offended when I didn't want a second date." She picked at the edge of her napkin. "I kept thinking: next year. Next app. Next city. Next version of myself. And then I turned forty-five and realized I'd spent my whole adult life in a waiting room."
"For what?" Lori asked.
"For my life to start."
She shrugged, playing it off, but she wasn't fooling anyone.
"So I deleted the apps. I decided I'm done waiting. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, I have a book to write and a cat who tolerates me."
Olivia looked up. "How's the book going?"
Jen's mouth twitched.
"It's going," she said.
That was all. But they'd known her long enough to hear what she wasn't saying.
Eyes turned to Meredith.
She'd been the listener all night. The one asking the hard questions, absorbing everyone else's confessions. Now it was her turn.
"What about you?" Carrie said.
Meredith reached for her wine. "I'm fine. Tom's fine. We're fine."
A beat. Meredith smoothed the napkin in her lap, buying time.
