“Cool girl. Men always use that, don’t they, as their defining compliment? She’s a Cool Girl. Cool Girl is hot, Cool Girl is game, Cool Girl is fun, Cool Girl never gets angry at her man, she only smiles in a chagrin, loving manner, and then presents her mouth for fucking. She likes what he likes, so evidently he’s a vinyl hipster who loves fetish manga. If he loves Girls Gone Wild, she’s a mall babe who talks football and endures buffalo wings at Hooters. When I met Nick Dunne I knew he wanted Cool Girl, and for him, I’ll admit, I was willing to try. I wax-stripped my pussy raw. I drank canned beer watching Adam Sandler movies. I ate cold pizza and remained a size 2. I blew him, semi-regularly. I lived in the moment. I was fucking game. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy some of it. Nick teased out of me things I didn’t know existed. A lightness. A humor. An ease. But I made him smarter, sharper. I inspired him to rise to my level. I forged the man of my dreams. We were happy pretending to be other people. We were the happiest couple we knew; and what’s the point of being together if you’re not the happiest? But Nick got lazy. He became someone I did not agree to marry. He actually expected me to love him unconditionally. Then he dragged me, penniless, to the navel of this great country, and found himself a newer, younger, bouncier Cool Girl. You think I’d let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way. He doesn’t get to win. My cute, charming, salt-of-the-earth, Missouri guy. He needed to learn. Grown-ups work for things. Grown-ups pay. Grown-ups suffer consequences.”