Read Tales From a Broad Online
Authors: LLC Melange Books
Tales From a Broad
by
Jeannine Henvey
Published by
Melange Books, LLC
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
Tales From a Broad, Copyright 2014
Jeannine Henvey
ISBN: 978-1-61235-911-3
Names, characters, and incidents
depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States of
America.
Cover Design by Caroline
Andrus
Table
of Contents
"The Best Places to Kiss in Paris" by Lucy
Banks
"
Sex
Six Tips
for the Single Girl in Europe" by Lucy Banks
TALES FROM A BROAD
by Jeannine Henvey
If you enjoy new twists on old classics,
then Tales From A Broad is a comedic adventure of one woman’s quest
to find herself, but the spotlight focuses on her older chaperone,
instead.
Forty-two and feeling not-so-fabulous, Lucy
Banks allows her older sister to talk her into accompanying her
twenty-four-year-old niece on a trip around Europe. In the past
year she has lost her fiancé, her job and her fertility. Embracing
her role as spinster aunt seems to be Lucy’s only option, until she
embarks on a romantic adventure through London, Amsterdam, Munich,
Paris and Florence. Will a room with a view and a handsome stranger
be enough to open her heart and mind to new experiences?
Tales From A Broad promises to draw readers
into a light-hearted tale of emotional development, self-discovery
and love.
To Sadie, Chloe and Carter—
For turning the wait to get published into a real
live game of
Chutes and Ladders.
You learned math by tracking submissions and
rejections, crossed fingers at bedtime, chanted publishers’ names
around the house and always made me smile. I love you with all my
heart.
Prologue
Friends & Family
Date: 3/19/14 at 11:00 PM
Subject: Wedding
Dear friends and family,
The wedding has been called off by mutual
consent.
I apologize for the impersonal nature of
this email. We have been blessed with too many loved ones to call
individually. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience this
may have caused.
With love,
Lucy and Cooper
I paused and held a trembling finger over my
mouse. Was it okay to say “mutual consent”? That might be a bit of
a stretch, considering I’d been dumped in a taxi and had tossed my
three-karat ring out the window somewhere on the George Washington
Bridge, but ... whatever. According to Google, this was the most
eloquent way to announce the cancellation of a wedding.
I scanned the email for the 10th time and
held my breath, hoping the message would send itself. “Here goes,”
I whispered and tapped the mouse. By the time the message was sent,
I was practically gasping for air.
I took a gulp of wine and leaned on the
kitchen island, waiting for the Chardonnay to calm my nerves.
Like it could.
Something stuck to my elbows, and when I
lifted them, I saw a filmy substance across the granite countertop.
Was it the orange juice I had spilled this morning? Or was that
yesterday?
“Who knows, who cares,” I muttered. My voice
sounded hollow in the quiet apartment. I hadn’t even brushed my
teeth today, so the fact that I’d neglected another daily
ritual—circling the island with a bottle of Windex in hand, didn’t
exactly come as a shock. What was a little dirt when my entire life
had crashed and burned?
I pressed my fingers to my very swollen
eyelids as if to counteract the damage that twenty-four hours of
crying had done to my face. Even my contact lenses had suffered.
They now felt like shards of glass on my eyeballs. I took my thumb
and forefinger to carefully extract each one, rolled them into tiny
little balls, then tore the lenses into minuscule pieces with my
nails. Somehow, performing that ritual gave me a sense of
satisfaction.
Ping
. I snapped my head up and
squinted at my laptop. An email from Aunt Louise. My stomach
churned as I stared at my inbox.
Ping.
Cooper’s cousin.
Ping. Ping. Ping
. F’ing ping!
Email vultures. It was as if they all had
been hovering around their computers for the bad news and couldn’t
wait to respond within ten seconds. Each new email made a pinging
sound on my computer, scraping at my nerves, and sending my iPhone
vibrating on the kitchen counter. The reverberations might as well
have been machine gun fire, straight to my heart.
Up until February fourteenth, I’d had a very
lucky life. Since then, my whole world managed to unravel over the
course of five short weeks.
First, I’d gotten the call that the parenting
magazine I’d worked at for the past three years would be going
under.
That was a setback, but with a wedding to
plan, I didn’t have time to dwell. Anyone who has ever planned a
New York City wedding knows that doing so can be a full time job in
and of itself. My newfound free time went to perfect use and even
allowed me to plan ahead for the future.
I was already thinking about our first
anniversary and knew I desperately wanted to give Cooper the baby
we both wanted so badly. To hell with the clock, the modern,
traditional, first anniversary gift. My own clock was ticking, and
losing my job seemed to be one more signal that the time was
right.
So when I wasn’t busy with wedding plans, I
caught up on all of the medical check-ups I was supposed to do when
I turned forty, which had been two years ago. I wanted to get in as
many appointments as I could before my kick-ass medical coverage
expired. That’s when I discovered that my eggs also had an
expiration date, which had already passed. The fertility specialist
told me that my body was in early menopause and I could no longer
get pregnant. My heart was broken.
And then, I got clobbered with the last
straw. I would never, ever have guessed in a million years that the
man I’d loved for the past five years couldn’t bear the thought of
not having his own biological kids. The news about my fertility
issues sent him running. He’d called off the wedding. I suppose it
was probably a good thing I got my eggs in a scramble before we
made the toast.
Still, it was hard to see the good in
anything. As my grandmother always used to say, when it rains it
pours. I was in the midst of a full-blown shit storm.
Ping
.
“Oh shut the hell up.” I slammed my laptop
shut and tapped my shaking fingers on the aluminum case. There were
150 guests on our email distribution list. That probably meant I’d
get about that many responses back.
I shook my head in disgust. Why was I the one
who had to deal with this? Mutual consent, my ass. I didn’t recall
having a say in any of this.
I downed the last drop of wine, stood up to
stretch, and blindly felt my way over to the Keurig, which had been
an engagement gift from my marketing department. Maybe there was a
bright side. Had I not been laid off last month, I would have had
to face the office on Monday. That would’ve been a total
nightmare.
Besides, at least now I get to keep the
Keurig. After all, it was European, sophisticated, and could brew a
warm beverage with the flick of a button. I placed an espresso pod
into the machine and pressed the lever down. I may have tossed my
engagement ring onto a bridge, but give back my coffee maker? No
way in hell.
Chapter
One
I refuse to empty the dishwasher today. My
goal is to use every last utensil in there.
Facebook Status May 19 at 11:20am
I stretched my arm from beneath the down
comforter and reached for my cell phone on the nightstand. I had a
string of missed calls from my sister Morgan, and it was already a
quarter past eleven. How did it get so late? I couldn’t believe the
racket on Lexington Avenue hadn’t woken me sooner.
I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of
life passing me by. Street drilling, the siren of a car alarm, and
the beeping sounds of a garbage truck were comforting reminders
that I wasn’t completely alone. I put on my slippers, padded into
the living room, and turned on the TV.
“Boy is it
beautiful
out there,” Kelly
Ripa chirped from her seat on “Live with Kelly & Michael,” as
her cheerful face came up on the screen. “There’s something about
this weather that makes you feel so, so ...
alive
,” she
sang.
“Not feelin’ it, Kel,” I sang back. All I
felt was guilt, and I certainly didn’t need to get it from her. It
had been two months since Cooper called off the wedding and still,
I hadn’t managed to reenter life. I didn’t need to be reminded I
was missing another quintessential spring day in the city.
I flipped the TV off, tossed the remote in
disgust, and put my feet on the coffee table. Using my toe, I
nudged the pile of accumulated crap on the table. It was a mish
mash of magazines, unread mail, wedding responses from those who
didn’t get the memo, and my beloved journal, which had been oh so
neglected.
I reached over and picked it up. A feeling of
nostalgia washed over me.
“Bless me journal for I have sinned,” I
murmured. “It’s been about a couple of months since my last
confession. It’s just that...” I paused to read one of the
inspirational messages printed across an empty page, “I don’t
really write when I’m down. I eat. And it’s just too darn messy to
hammer cheese doodles and write at the same time.”
Maybe I should go hands-free. Siri for slobs?
A digital Dictaphone? I pondered whether they made waterproof ones
that protected against flying crumbs and sticky fingers when I
heard a knock at the door.
I froze for a moment. God strike down the
person who invented the drive by visit! Luckily for them, my
prayers were rarely answered these days. I tiptoed quietly over to
the door and peered out the peephole.
I groaned inwardly. There stood Morgan, and I
saw anxiety written all over her face, magnified through the tiny
peephole. She bit her fingernail and knocked again, this time a
little harder.
“Lu, open up! It’s us!” Morgan sang in a
chipper tone.
She may have sounded upbeat, but that didn’t
fool me. I knew my sister well enough to know she was nervous. She
was probably worried about how her unstable sister would react to
her unannounced visit.
She had called the night before with an
invitation to take me out for a drink. When I told her that I
wasn’t in the mood for a cordial, her reaction was anything but.
Over the past two months, the majority of our phone calls had gone
in the very same direction. Bother, rinse, and repeat.
But last night, the routine was over. What
had started with a friendly hello, ended with a not-so-friendly
goodbye—on my part.
I looked out the peephole again and saw Tess,
my twenty-four-year-old niece, staring back at me with apologetic
eyes. Telepathically I told her, “Don’t worry, Tessie. I know
you’re not responsible for this.”
