WHERE THEY FOUND HER by Kimberly McCreight

“According to my law school friend, this was why men never called me for a second date: I was a hard-ass.
Too serious, too exacting. Humorless.

I needed to let some of their harmless male bullshit flow over me; men didn’t want to be called out for every little thing.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this.
My whole life, friends–men especially–had been telling me how much luckier in love I would be if I’d lighten up.

Sometimes I wanted to defend myself, to ask how many of them had grown up like me. Because the truth was: I would choose alone any day over angry like my mother.

As it turned out, Justin fell in love with my sharpest edges.
He genuinely valued my willingness to call him out on his particular brand of bullshit.
And as much as Justin valued the clarity of my black and white, I’d been intoxicated by his world of grays. By his fearlessness and his freedom and his very modest sense of entitlement.

Justin had never believed that he needed to be right 100 percent of the time to be a decent person; he didn’t need to be perfect to be loved.
As it turned out, I wanted to feel that way also, much more than I’d ever let myself believe.”

Kindle, 2021