Best Offer Wins

Thinking quickly, Margo explains that she was out for a run—she’s wearing sneakers and a pair of Lululemons—got lost, and fell. The man seems to believe her, and she’s grateful. They chat for a moment, and she finds out that he’s moving to London. She asks for directions and then runs off.

Ian, who didn’t want to seem like a “creep,” has already driven away, and he texts her his location. She does not share her interaction with the house’s owner, but Ian is still upset with her for sneaking into a complete stranger’s back yard to scope out their house. They argue about houses frequently these days, but Margo brushes this disagreement off: She is too excited about the house to get truly angry.

Later, their agent calls. The owners are not open to accepting an offer without putting their place on the market, but she is hopeful. The house will be within Margo and Ian’s price range. Thinking quickly, Margo asks Ginny where her sister-in-law does yoga. Perhaps she can find a way to give her and Ian an advantage, should there be a bidding war.

Margo is a former journalist who now works in PR, so she is no stranger to online sleuthing. She locates the house’s public records and finds the names of its owners: Curtis Bradshaw and Jack Lombardi. Curtis is a Georgetown economics professor who, because of a successful and well-promoted book, has a large Twitter following and a sizeable online presence. She finds Curtis and Jack’s New York Times wedding announcement and learns that they are about 10 years her senior. Curtis’s parents run a hedge fund but Jack seems to be self-made, like Margo.

Further digging uncovers more information: The couple have an adopted Asian daughter. Margo assumes that the young girl is Chinese; she herself is Japanese, but she hopes that being Asian—as so many white people do not bother to distinguish between Asian people from different countries—might come in handy. Ian would absolutely hate this line of thinking, but Margo is more cutthroat and is willing to use anything she possibly can to her advantage.

She shuts her computer to get ready to go out. She and Ian are meeting their friends Erika and Heath for drinks. Margo and Erika were journalists together. Margo quit to pursue more lucrative positions in PR, and Erika moved up through the ranks and has made a name for herself. Heath used to work with Ian at the EPA, but left to take a position at a top law firm. Ian, much to Margo’s chagrin, has given up a job at a top law firm to work for the government. Heath’s salary skyrocketed, and Ian’s was cut in half.

Erika and Heath live in a gorgeous, $2-million-dollar Tudor home and have a young son, Luca. Erika got pregnant as soon as they started trying, and the Tudor was the first house they bid on. As the couples chat, Margo and Ian become increasingly irritated. They are both envious of their friends and make an excuse to leave quickly.

Margo tells Ian that she is meeting a potential client but instead goes to Power + Grace, the yoga studio that Curtis, or maybe Jack, attends. She waits in the lot until she sees Jack get out of his car and then heads in after him. She snags a spot right next to him, and he recognizes her from their run-in the previous day.

The two begin chatting, and Margo comments on his daughter’s picture when it pops up on his phone. Rather awkwardly, Jack tells Margo that his daughter’s name is Penny and that he wished she’d been there when he ran into Margo. Penny, who is indeed Chinese as Margo suspected, does not get a chance to interact with many Asian women. Jack instantly apologizes for the way his comment might have come across, but Margo assures him that she “gets it.” She adds that she and her husband are thinking of adopting, and Jack invites her to coffee after yoga.

The class is intense, and Margo is mortified by how out-of-shape she is, especially given how skilled Jack is, but he doesn’t judge her. At coffee, Jack shares the ups and downs of the adoption process. Margo, lying, explains to Jack that she didn’t feel comfortable doing IVF (in truth, Ian hadn’t wanted to go through the process) and that her husband was initially averse to adoption (this is also a lie, as they haven’t discussed adoption, but Margo knows that Ian would be happy to give a child a home).

Jack tells her more about his life: Curtis has just accepted a job in London, and Jack plans to take some time off. He works in commercial furniture sales but is looking forward to being a stay-at-home dad. When the subject of their impending house sale comes up, Margo jokes that she and Ian should buy the home. Jack seems slightly more reserved at this point, but tells Margo that he will give her a heads up when they are about to list.

Curt drops Penny off with Jack so that he can run off to a meeting. Penny turns out to be smiley and outgoing, and she invites Margo to the park with her and Jack. Thrilled, Margo agrees to accompany them.

At the park, they run into Penny’s friend Violet and her mother. Violet and Penny attend the same gymnastics class, and the girls run off to play. Her mother assumes that Margo is Jack’s new nanny and that she doesn’t speak English. When she finds out that Margo is Japanese American and the VP at a PR firm, she reddens with embarrassment. The ensuing conversation is full of even more mortifying gaffes, and Margo and Jack exchange a series of knowing looks. It is evident that Jack finds this woman just as irritating as Margo does. When they are ready to leave, Jack invites Margo and Ian over to dinner the following week. Excited, Margo accepts.

Ian is furious when Margo tells him about Jack’s invite. An argument ensues during which Ian accuses Margo of stalking Jack and Curtis. Margot fires back an insult, and Ian curses at her. He has never cursed at her before, and she is stunned.

He rushes out of the house, and Margo recalls other disagreements they’ve had about the house-hunting process. Ian has always been a calm, dependable partner, but he hadn’t wanted to sell their row house at the height of the pandemic and move into a germ-ridden apartment building. They’d argued then too, but he’d gotten over it and agreed to sell. Margo counts on him to come around again this time and decides to make his mother’s roast chicken recipe for dinner.

She heads to the market with their neighbor Natalie, a free spirit caught up in a whirlwind of post-divorce dating. By the time she is home and the chicken is finished, Ian still hasn’t returned. She drinks an entire bottle of wine alone while creating a Pinterest board for the new home, scoping out Erika’s interior designer Zoe Estelle’s Instagram page for inspiration.

Margo awakes with a terrible hangover, but she has to get to work for an early meeting. Ian is still asleep. He must have come home late the night before.

Margo feels as though she were moving through sludge and cannot muster much interest in the meeting. Truthfully, she finds PR ridiculous even on a good day. She made the move from journalism to her current firm, Buzz, when Ian gave up his impressive salary to work for the EPA, fulfilling a college-era dream of devoting his life to environmentalism. She decided that they could not survive on his new, lesser salary plus her paltry income, and the PR job paid handsomely. Having been truly devoted to the idea of truthful reporting and contributing to society’s understanding of current events, she finds party-planning, working with influencers, and being a paid hype-woman decidedly unserious. Still, she participates in the meeting and then is happy to be able to head home early.

There, she and Ian make up. She has rehearsed what she will say (she has decided to play the victim rather than remain angry) and, as he always does, Ian apologizes and takes her side. She even manages to convince him to come to dinner with Jack and Curtis, even though he still thinks that Margo is unethical to pursue a friendship with Jack, given her ulterior motive.

Margo and Ian arrive for their dinner with Jack and Curtis. Margo has been eager to see more of the house, and inside it is just as beautiful as she imagined. The rooms, she thinks, radiate class, and Jack and Curtis have impeccable decorating taste. She has brought a coloring book of London architecture for Penny, and Penny is thrilled with the gift. Margo, in turn, is thrilled when Penny offers to show her up to her room: This little trip will give her access to the second floor. It is as beautiful as the first floor, and Margo almost cries when she sees the primary bedroom and its en-suite bathroom.

Outside in the backyard, Margo is drawn to the tire swing. She learns that the previous owners installed it and realizes that it has likely been there her entire life. Growing up, her parents were rarely around, and Margo had been envious of her neighbor Alyssa. Alyssa had a tire swing, but she also had a mother who walked her to the bus stop and a father who cared about her. The fact that this house has a tire swing makes her want it all the more and makes her hope that she and Ian are destined to be its next owners.

The two couples hit it off. Margo can tell that Ian is upset when the topic of adoption comes up and Margo lies about their interest in Jack and Curtis’s adoption agency, but other than that he seems to be enjoying himself. Emboldened by how well the evening is going, Margo brings up the house. She tells Curtis and Jack that she and Ian would love to make an offer, and even broaches the idea of an off-market sale. At this comment, both Curtis and Ian stiffen. Curtis and Jack head inside to get dessert, and when they return, it is evident that they talked the idea over. They explain that their agent would prefer them to list the house, but that they’d be happy if Ian and Margo ended up buying it.

Ian, trying to do damage control, assures them that their real estate agent Ginny would kill them for doing a deal without her. Margo panics, as she told Ian not to mention Ginny by name. Jack’s facial expression changes. He knows Ginny: Her sister-in-law does yoga with him, and she was there the day he first mentioned selling their house. He has figured everything out. Curtis escorts Ian and Margo out of their home, cursing at them and telling them not to come anywhere near his family again.

Margo takes several Xanax and sleeps through her alarm. She wakes to an angry call from her boss Jordana: Their event is underway, and she needs to get there as quickly as possible. She calls a car, forgetting that her own car was full of supplies that she would need for the night. Jordana is furious that Margo is late, furious about the missing supplies, and furious with a series of other small mishaps that would not have happened if Margo had been there. When Margo accidentally brings an alcoholic beverage to one of their VIPs who has been sober for decades, Jordana tells her to go home. She refuses to say whether or not Margo has been fired.

Margo does not tell Ian that she might be fired. She remembers her childhood, the weeks her father spent pretending he had a job when he had been let go. Although he got dressed in his work clothes and left the house every day, he was also moody, silent, and had started smoking again. She and her family knew that something wasn’t right. Finally, they’d found a foreclosure notice for their house on his nightstand, and they knew why he’d been acting so strangely.

Margo waits for a call from Jordana and texts Ginny. Ginny responds by saying that she can no longer work with Margo and Ian anymore. Frustrated, Margo peruses the Amazon reviews on Curtis’s book: One of them is cryptic. It reads, “Do not trust Curtis Bradshaw” in all capitals (93). Intrigued, Margo decides to do some more digging into Curtis. He’d given her a strange feeling too, and she wonders if there is more to him than meets the eye.