The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes, Jo Piazza Read Free Book Online

printer. I don’t want you to have to print all of my emails out for me.”
    “How about I do that first thing in the morning,” Ashley replied cheerily. “Join us for cocktails after work. Eve is leaving early today for the first time in
months
. We think we can sneak out behind her.”
    Imogen always loved hanging out with the younger girls in her office. Nurturing young talent was one of her favorite parts of her job. She wished she could bottle their energy.
    “Let me call my nanny.”
    —
    There is something delightful but also terrifying about drinking with twenty-two-year-olds. First comes the sense of freedom when no one pointedly looks at her watch, making offhand comments about how the nanny is passive-aggressive after nine p.m. Then there is the sheer panic of abandoning adult drinking rules one sets at the age of thirty: say no to shots, never drink anything blue, drink one glass of water for every alcoholic beverage. Those rules exist for a reason, and yet Imogen took her first tequila shot of the evening standing at the barwhile their group waited for a table. This was the kind of place people in their twenties gravitated to after work, all fit bodies pressing up against one another, knowing a few drinks could get you into bed with someone new for the night. The difference between this scene and similar ones Imogen encountered when she was in her own twenties was that everyone was deeply absorbed in their phones instead of scoping the crowd. They texted, they tweeted and they checked Facebook, oblivious to the world around them. Was there even a point to being in the same room as one another anymore? Their entire lives were condensed in the palms of their hands.
    As the temperature in the crowded bar rose, the girls from the office all removed their high-cropped leather motorcycle jackets in various shades of taupe to reveal perfectly tanned shoulders.
    They were very excited about a new mobile app called “Yo.”
    “What does it do?” Imogen asked.
    “It just lets you say ‘yo’ to someone,” Mandi said.
    “What does that even mean?”
    Mandi giggled a little. “It just means yo.” She wiggled her head and waved her hand in the universal signal for hello.
    “That’s ridiculous!” Imogen said, with the certainty that it was absolutely ridiculous. Mandi shrugged and Ali nodded her head vigorously.
    “I mean. I can’t even. Ridiculous or not,” Ali said, “they just got a million dollars in funding. There’s another app that lets you just text pictures of tacos. I think they got funded too.”
    Spending time with her junior editors in the past consisted mainly of coffees and the occasional cocktail party. This was incredibly intimate. The lines of propriety were erased. Yet these girls still treated her with respect. She noticed they were all wearing that black bracelet.
    When it came time to order wine, the girls deferred to Imogen. Perry from Marketing shyly handed her the not terribly extensive wine list.
    “You probably know way more about wine than we do,” Perry deferred. That was true, Imogen did know something about picking a good wine, the kind of wine that wouldn’t break a twentysomething’sbank account but didn’t need to be swallowed quickly to bypass the taste buds either. She ordered two bottles of the Borsao rosé for the group. As they waited for it to arrive at the table, the buzz of Patrón wearing away, Ashley groaned about how her mother was driving her insane.
    “Menopause,” she carped. Imogen chose to ignore the sideways glances cast her way. Did these girls really believe menopause was something that happened the second you turned forty? She had a four-year-old at home and a menstrual cycle like clockwork. But she decided to cut them some slack. When she was twenty-two she too had thought everyone over thirty was the same age—old. Imogen
had
been nervous when she turned forty and noticed that waiters began calling her ma’am in an unironic way. One of her