“Well, I didn’t want to say anything I’d ever have to regret. I had to be sure,” Amelia said, chuckling. “I guess I really didn’t think of how he’d take it. He did lose a good amount of weight though. In retrospect, I should have waited another month or two, and he would have had abs.”

The women laughed in the car as it sped down the interstate highway. They drove for about three minutes in silence. Harper stared out the window with the spiral-bound book in her lap, and Amelia fidgeted with the radio trying to find something she figured they both could enjoy.

“Don’t worry too much about love, anyway,” Amelia said.

“I don’t,” Harper said.

“It really messed up a whole generation of women, I think,” Amelia said. “Not love itself, but the hunt for it. When you’re really desperate for something, you never, ever find it. And if you can’t find something you need, it drives you crazy. And if you do find love, after all that mess, and it isn’t exactly how you pictured it in your mind, that’ll make you resent love in general. And that sours people’s insides, I’ve seen it.”

“Do you love your ex?” Harper said.

“Yeah, I’ll always love him, whether I like it or not.”

“You never answered me, though,” Harper said. “Why’d you get divorced?”

“Look, love is great and all, but there’s more to a marriage. Partnership, cohabitability, respect, self-respect, it’s all a lot of stuff. Hard to express,” Amelia said.

“I guess I get it,” Harper said, looking out the window.

Amelia drove on. The highway weaved east, gliding through farmlands of soy and low, sloping hills, flanking woods swelling with green in the early summer. The weather was hot and humid. It wasn’t a long drive, but it was the farthest both Harper and Amelia had been from their hometown in about a year. They alternated between the pop radio station and the country station. Amelia controlled the dial.

“Look, you made me think about it and now I can’t stop thinking so I’m just going to say this to get it off my chest,” Amelia said.

“Okay,” Harper said.