“Can I tell you that you’re beautiful?” Yvette said.

“Please don’t,” Leslie said.

Yvette reached out and brushed her fingers distractedly through Leslie’s damp, tangled hair.

“I get it, you know?” Yvette said. “Like, I get it. And I think you do, too. Not many people do.”

Leslie shifted closer to her. She wanted to make sure she was understood.

“There’s nothing to get, Yvette,” she said. “Except, in your case, fucked.”

Yvette continued to stroke her hair, unfazed.

“I could get rich,” she said. “I could get sick. Hey, pretty soon I’m going to get divorced.”

“Jesus,” Leslie said.

Yvette exhaled a hard, warm breath into her face.

“I know,” she said. “So many options.”

Acknowledgments

I’m grateful to:

Molly Atlas at ICM;

Jeremy M. Davies, Deborah Ghim, Lauren Roberts, and Rodrigo Corral at FSG;

Laura Kolbe, Sara Martin, and Nick Tenev;

David Gates, Lee Johnson, Amanda Korman, Jordan Rossen, Emma Törzs, and many other friends and colleagues for their advice and editorial interventions;

Lorin Stein and Nicole Rudick at The Paris Review, Laura Cogan at ZYZZYVA, and Medaya Ocher and Sara Davis at the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly for editing and publishing earlier versions of some of these stories;

The MacDowell Colony for time to work;

My parents, for everything else.

Also by Andrew Martin

ALSO BY ANDREW MARTIN

Early Work

Praise for Cool for America

Praise for Cool for America

“A brilliant, honest read that will have you laughing out of both appreciation and discomfort … Genius … A collection of sharp-witted glances at the commonly shared stumble of today’s academic upper class.”

—Anthony DiMauro, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Remarkable … Martin has a real talent for highlighting the absurdity of life while never condescending to his characters. Every story in Cool for America is smart, stylish and a testament to Martin’s keen observations on the human condition.”

—Michael Schaub, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“Martin has emerged as a leading chronicler of millennial ennui in contemporary America … [His writing] is as light and lively as his characters are frozen and hesitant. Frequently hilarious, Martin’s stories are insightful, and the characters are both truthful and authentic.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“If you’re a fan of Sally Rooney novels, try Andrew Martin’s Early Work. Martin is neither female nor Irish but he scratches the same itch as Rooney, with cerebral characters and tender discoveries and enough acid to keep the thing balanced. Martin’s follow-up is a collection of short stories that explores the search for transcendence through art.”

—Vulture

“If you read Martin’s excellent debut novel Early Work, you will recognize the themes (millennial ennui, underemployment, overeducation, a tendency to think too hard and do too little) of his winning first collection … These stories are perceptive slices-of-anxiety that will be uncomfortably, ecstatically recognizable to anyone who has ever considered themselves an intellectual—especially if it was sometime in the 2010s.”

—Emily Temple, Literary Hub