"And so then I found out that her Gucci purse was a complete fake the entire time! She tried to make me believe she got it specially made for her the last time she was in Italy, when come to find out, she got it in New York. In Chinatown. Do you believe that?"
I took a slow sip from my iced coffee, shaking my head as if I gave a single fuck. "That's crazy."
"I know!" Beatrice huffed out a laugh. "I'm telling you, some of these Beverly Hills moms...they're batshit insane."
"Mm," I laughed more genuinely at that, considering she had absolutely no idea she was talking about herself.
As she continued shit-talking another mom in our same playgroup, who just so happened to not make it out that morning, I watched Nora running around with the other children on the playground.
It was a hard decision to make, when I was found worthy of the Beverly Hills Mom Cult, and they asked me to start joining them for coffee at the park three to four days a week now that school was out for the summer.
On one hand, I really, really did not want Nora spending any time with their little snot-nosed brats, but on the other, I wanted her to have friends to play with so she could have fun and socialize the way kids do.
You'd think that there would have been at least one normal mother who put their child in the same private school, but there wasn't. Believe it or not, the moms outside of the cult were worse, and so were their children.
"Anyway," Beatrice sighed dramatically, "tell me what you've got going on. Do you have a job? I don't think I ever asked you that."
"Oh," I swallowed my sip and lowered my cup to my lap. "No, I don't."
"Ah," she smirked, "husband pays for everything? That's the only way to really live, honey."
I offered something of a laugh. "Kind of. Ex-husband."
That wasn't true. Harry was never my husband to begin with, but it was easier to explain it that way.
"Wow," she widened her already giant blue eyes. "My ex-husband would laugh right in my face if I asked him for anything...and my other ex-husband too."
"Yeah, well there's really no bad blood. It was a mutual breakup and we're still friends, so."
"So you're still sleeping with him," she surmised.
I shook my head with my mouth in a tight line. "No, he lives in London so we really only see him once a year when he can make it down here."
Another lie.
"Oh, okay. And what does he do? I mean, it must be something pretty impressive if you can afford Nora's school and live in Beverly Hills without working at all yourself."
"He, um..." I cleared my throat, "he has his own business. It's like, a lot of financial stuff. I don't really understand it."
That made her cackle as she pat my thigh over my maxi dress. "Isn't it funny how that works? All the best paying jobs are the ones no one else can understand."
I vaguely agreed as I fished Nora's water bottle from my bag and excused myself to go and take it to her. It was perfect timing too, when the other moms started filtering back in from the lap they did around the park.
Nora's cheeks were pink as she met me halfway for her water, sipping dramatically from the straw while I gathered her hair to put up in a high ponytail. "I'm having so much fun, mommy," she huffed.
"That's good, but we gotta get going kind of soon, okay?"
She turned and pouted at me with green puppy dog eyes and little bow shaped lips. "Why?"
