The Romance Novel Book Club (4 page)

Chapter Seven

My period came and went, along with
the raging hormones. Avoiding Casa Favolosa helped on the latter.
I finished off my latest contract work, a menu design for an upscale restaurant on the east side. They were an old client of mine when I worked at my last job. When they found out I’d been let go, they contacted me personally.

Go me.

I’m sure my ex-boss had
to be fuming over that one. Maybe he should rethink not giving out corporate cell phones or firing me on the spot because I refused to give him a peek at my glorious globes. Pervert.

My client, a big account, trusted me in every facet of their design. Since I worked out of my apartment, my overhead was next to nothing. I paid a printing service, since I couldn’t fit the equipment in my apartment, and I still had a bigger wad of cash than my old commission rate.

Tonight I planned to celebrate my big payday with Julie. A new romance novel arrived in the mail. After a good meal, we’d page through the book.

Winter’s Kiss
had a feisty-looking red head on the cover holding a laser with some dark brooding male in the background. Joy.

Heart’s Desire
left a bad taste in my mouth. Even if I burned the book and made s’mores in the ashes, my mouth would feel like I licked a piece of felt soaked in vinegar for all my waking hours. Nothing would improve my outlook on reading romance novels. I lamented when the characters had sex and growled at the happily ever after part. I couldn’t bring myself to start a new one.

Julie wanted to go to the Casa Favolosa for dinner, but I feigned having a bad bout of flatulence. Gassing the whole restaurant and causing a health hazard wasn’t in my line of work, I told her. Two weeks had passed since the awful night with Matt. Well, not completely awful. Since then I’d tried the club scene. I managed to have a guy dance-hump my leg. So not a turn on but being desperate for a little action, I thought I’d test the waters. He wasn’t give-a-fake-name ugly by any means. When he opened his mouth after I allowed some mutual feeling up, it was a deal breaker. The guy had written the book on cheesy lines and read them chapter-by-chapter. I pretended to get another drink and slipped out the front door.

I scratched the place off my list to search for potential suitors.

I had to face the facts. I couldn’t have Matt, which made him all the more desirable. My body reacted like a hormone-infused teenager around him. I pushed him from my thoughts and prepared for Julie’s arrival.

I plunked down the dinnerware on the countertop between the kitchen and living room. A dining table was a waste because I needed the space for my drafting table. Not like I entertained much anyways. Playing party host required a gaggle of friends I’d never bothered to acquire. Most of the girls Julie and I hung out with in college moved to various places around the country. We saw them at reunions and not much else.

My wardrobe came straight from my nighttime comfy collection: Lounge pants and a tank top barely keeping the girls from popping out for a fiesta of their own. I was afflicted with my mother’s ever growing boob disease. I had gained weight last year after losing my job and with the help of Julie, I shed those pounds plus some; yet the boobs remained. Some girls looked at awe at my perky orbs, but to me it meant guys were more interested in talking to my chest than to me.

I once dated a guy with a boob fetish. Every moment we had alone together his hands stuck to
them like magnets
. I dumped him after a month. I could only take the ‘let me be your bra for the day’ joke so many times. Wouldn’t that have been professional in a meeting with a client to see some guy standing behind me with his hands supporting my ta-tas. I never saw a woman offering to be a guy’s jock strap to hold his junk all day. That part might be a hell of a drug in bed but nothing I wanted to fondle all day.

I absent-mindedly picked up my phone as it started ringing. “Patricia speaking.”

“Hey, Patricia,” Julie drawled like a long lost lover. “I’m at the restaurant, and they have this new pasta thingy with a parmesan cream sauce. Wanna try it, or should I get the usual?”

“I feel adventurous. Go for it. You bring your jammies so I can see what I’m going to look at in a few years?” I snorted.

“Oh my god! You just want me for me body,” Julie belted out in a perfect Valley Girl accent. “Oh someone wants to talk to you.”

“Who?” I sucked in a breath as Matt’s voice filtered through the phone. Keep it cool, girl. Chill.

“Hey, Patricia. Did I leave my phone there? I haven’t been able to locate it, and the phone company says no one has used it.”

“Don’t think so.” Like I’d remember after the vat of wine I consumed. “How the hell do you go that long without your cell?”

“When you have an ex calling to remind you how much better their life is without you. It’s not that hard.”

He had a point.

“Let me check the laundry room quick.” I sauntered in, my body feeling like some giddy high school girl talking to the guy she thinks is super keen from her art class. Oh my God, Becky. I totally talked to Matt yesterday on the phone. He’s so dreamy. Maybe he’ll ask me to the prom!

“Ouch, dammit.” I swore as one of my melons got pinched when I leaned over the washer and dryer to check.

“You okay?” Matt questioned. I grunted and fumbled, seeing something wedged between the machines.

“Yeah.” Ugh. “Fine. Just one of the girls playing safety cushion with the dryer.”

“Girls?”

Almost there. “Yeah, a guy like you wouldn’t have noticed, but I’ve got an impressive set of knockers. So Julie keeps telling me.” Inch by inch I pulled what appeared to be a cell phone out. I was never sure what I’d find in the crevices of the laundry room. I once found a chocolate bar way past its expiration date. Yes, I was not ashamed to say I ate it. “You’ve got one of those folding Blackberries, right?”

“That would be it. Okay if I come over after my shift and get it?”

“Sure. Julie and I should be winding down our evening festivities by then.”

I said my goodbyes and hung up. The conversation didn’t go as bad as I thought it would. My apartment was still intact without some lava-filled catastrophe. Not that I could muster the courage to talk to him face to face.

The muses of Matt had to go. I had a weekend with Julie to set into motion. Our self-made tradition and a stress buster for Julie, it relieved the tension before she flew out to visit her parents. They were as bad as mine in wondering when their little girl would walk down the aisle with the parent-approved man. Julie’s first marriage was a wild weekend in Vegas. Never trust a preacher that dresses like Elvis and sounds like Lady Gaga.

The speeches we had to endure from our parents.

No pressure, daughter, but we’re not getting any younger, and we’d like to see grandchildren before we’re co-dependent on adult diapers and fiber tablets to help us poop.

Julie’s parents never let her live it down on her poor choice in her first marriage.

Love: the four-letter word of doom.

It hurt just to think of what Julie went through with that cheating jerk wad. All because her parents believed that divorce was just as bad as kissing Satan.

I leaned against the dryer and gla
nced over Matt’s phone,
opening it up to read the display. He’d been looking at something while he played the ski
n flute
. I flipped it shut, reddening. Would I be one of those snooping ninnies who scoured through someone’s phone to see what he or she had on it? I was better than that, right? Okay, no, I wasn’t, and I opened it back up to find the incriminating photos. I scrolled through them, first seeing Matt with another woman cheek to cheek. Old by the buzz-cut Matt sported. I preferred his longer locks. I sorted through picture after picture of Matt with a bunch of guys. In most of them, Matt’s red eyes screamed drunk. He had a half-lidded stupid grin plastered on his face. The last picture, however, puzzled me. I couldn’t tell if it was someone’s butt crack or boobs honestly. Whoever it was had a big old red stain on the white fabric. I figured it had to be one of his drunken butt buddies from the previous pictures. I don’t even want to guess what made then stain. Ew.

Being the self-absorbed woman I’m turning into, I decided to add my phone number into his phone. If I couldn’t have him, maybe I’d use him to fend off some unwanted affections from the slobbering Boobmen from Mars.

What was I doing? Playing another round of try to fuck the gay man straight? Just as I went to retrieve it and take it out, an insistent pounding came at the door followed by Julie’s shouts.

“Let me the hell in. It’s freaking freezing out here.”

I tossed Matt’s phone on the counter as I made my way to let her royal princess in.

Friends, dinner, and a discussion on the latest fuck me book. Such was the life of a single girl.

Chapter Eight

“Oh my GOD!” I said through the door. “I can’t let you in. You’re a serial lesbian rapist, come to make me do naughty things with a banana and whipped cream!”

“Just for that I’m going to start calling you Peppermint Patti when we become hot girl on girl action.” Julie huffed. I opened the door with a smirk. She barged past me with a large bag of food in one hand and her copy of
Winter’s Kiss
in the other. Mine was conveniently mashed in the cushions of my couch. I should have known Julie wouldn’t forget the reading part of the festivities.

“I must confess I haven’t started the book yet, Julie. Every time I pick it up, I remember how these damn virgins are getting more action than me.”

I pinched Julie’s butt as she passed me on the way into the kitchen.

“Hey. When did you get a new phone?” She held up Matt’s phone, and I snatched it away.

“It’s not mine, it’s Matt’s. He dropped it in the laundry room.” I shoved it into my pocket. Julie’s resistance to snoop was far lower than mine. My fingers perused my wine rack to complement the meal. “He’s stopping by later to get it.” I passed my wine choice to Julie.

“So anything happen that I should know about?” Julie held the bottle near her mouth, simulating fellatio.

“Yeah, right.” I snorted. “It’s getting so bad, I’m thinking about hitting Black Room.”

“Oh, Patricia.”

“Over it, Julie. I have plenty of work to occupy my dirty mind.” Black Room was an underground club. Members only. Through a discreet doctor, card carriers were checked for crotch rot diseases and the like. We also had to maintain appearance and a certain weight ratio. In my after college years, I dabbled in a few fetishes to shake off the last of the corn-feed bumpkin in me. Black Room provided a safe haven to let my inhibitions go.

Unfortunately, as fun as the membership was, the anonymity meant finding a man to spend the rest of my life with impossible.
  

I opened the freezer door and waved my arm like a Price is Right girl over the pints of Häagen-Dazs. Julie bounced up and down in mock celebration.

“Well if you decide to fish without your wing woman outside Black Room, I’ll teach you some of the moves Ted taught me at that club. You know, he’s not a half bad dancer. You think with his build he’d be like a nerdy kid.”

“You weren’t uncomfortable?” I asked, putting the wine bottle between my legs to twist the cork out.

“At first, yeah, but what a great place. Ted kept telling all the girls I was yours so I got to talk to the guys. I tell you what, Patricia. It was so refreshing to be able to talk to a guy without wondering if he wanted to get into my pants.”

“Says you.” I smirked, yanking the cork free. I toasted to the air and took a swig straight from the bottle. Nothing like sucking Three Palms Merlot like it’s Night Train. “I want to get drunk and read about sex. Then I’m going to test out my latest toy in the shower while you pass out on the couch.”

Julie laughed, and I fill
ed our glasses. I
broke out the expensive stuff first, then the large economy box wine after we got sloshed. Our conversation surrounded our jobs, non-relationships, and how to avoid the gym—anything but the romance novel. Dinner lasted as long as food in a pig trough.

Just one of the reasons I loved spending time with Julie. Prim and proper went out the window; I could get sloppy and chew with my mouth open within the confines of my apartment. I took the time to show Julie how well I chewed my food. She lifted her ass to trumpet my achievements. Both of us
giggled like schoolgirls. W
e could allow our hair to drop down and not worry about proper lady etiquette.

The evening wound down with us sitting on the couch gobbling up the pints of ice cream. I fingered
Winter’s Kiss
, reluctant to open the written word. I picked the novel up nonetheless to read the back splash.

Jackson
hears the feared hunter Hartley aims to collect the bounty on his head. The thought amuses him at first until his first run in with the fiery red head. He couldn’t hold the shock from his face as she pinned him to the ground. His natural instinct should have been to slip his dagger into her gut.

Feared across the galaxy for hunting down her prey without firing a single shot, Hartley decides to go for a challenge: Jackson Garrote, a man responsible for the deaths of an entire lunar colony in the Orion Galaxy. Expecting to gaze into the eyes of a killer when she catches him, she finds something entirely different.

I made a gagging noise. “Can’t we skip the reading tonight?”

“No, and it’s your turn to read.”

I pouted and heaped a large scoop of ice cream into my mouth. A stall tactic: I couldn’t read and gobble the ice cream. Julie pursed her lips, and I shrugged my shoulders, pleading the fifth with a pint of ice cream. Julie lunged over, trying to pry my frozen necessity out of my hands.

“Okay, okay.” I whined. “I’ll read it.” I took up the book like it had the plague and flipped it open to the first page.

“Arching her back, Hartley planted her foot on the wall and back flipped, a simple exercise she practiced daily. Her other foot tapped off the other wall in the tight corridor, and her hand touched the ceiling. Sweat beaded on her brow, and she sucked in a deep, clean breath. ‘Fifty more to go,’ she said.” I stopped. “This is one of those bad-ass chicks one, isn’t it? So should I bet now or later that whatever man she wants to make monkey love with saves her, because she loses her superpowers?”

“You’ve got to give one of these books a chance. One of them might be halfway decent.”

“I need more wine.” I got up. “Join me?”

“You just want to get me into bed.”

“Yep.” I held out a fresh glass of wine for her. We toasted ourselves through another bottle of wine. I put on some music and sashayed across the bare hardwood floor. Julie, just as drunk as I was, came up behind me and mock-smacked my ass in some hip-hop step move. I turned into her, laughing as my arms draped across her shoulders, and grinded on her leg. She snorted, a habit of hers when she got the severe giggles, and spun me around. She pressed in close to my back and ran her hands up the front of me.

“Sway your hips into me, Patricia.” I moved my booty for her. “Yeah. That’s exactly how the guys were doing it in the club. They said it turns them on, so I don’t see why we couldn’t use the move.” She pressed a hand on my stomach, and we tried like hell to not bust out laughing.

In our mirth, I almost missed the doorbell ringing.

“Come in!” I yelled, and I moved Julie’s hands around in front of me to the music. I glanced at the door opening only to stagger in my step when I saw Matt. Julie and I parted like girls getting cootie-kissed. I ran over to shut the music off.

“Hi, Matt! How’s Ted?” Julie stifled a chortle, fixing her pajama top.

“Oh, fine. He’s closing up for the night, actually. He wanted me to ask you something, Julie.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say Matt was blushing. Julie put up a finger as her phone started chiming.

“Parental units. Gawd.” She ran off to my bedroom for privacy.

“I’m sorry. I should have called first,” Matt said.

My face felt hot to the touch. I shouldn’t feel flustered over Matt finding Julie and me dancing like that. “Don’t worry about it, Matt.” I fidgeted with the dirty dishes on the counter as he approached. Maybe the wine affected me, but my stomach fluttered more and more the closer he got. Fumbling, I took his phone out of my pocket and handed it over.

Arm’s length. I had to keep him at arm’s length.

“I put my cell number in your phone, um, you know because … ah.” Talk, mouth! Talk! Earth to brain: Heeee-lllooo? I’ve never felt so relieved when Julie reappeared to save me from foot in mouth disease. I pleaded with her with puppy dog eyes to save me, but her somber expression kicked my issues down the drain.

“That was my mom. Dad’s been taken to the emergency room. She’s called a plane ticket in for me. I’m sorry, Patricia, but I have to run.”

My heart plummeted. No matter what our relationship with our parents, bad news brought us no joy. I embraced her in a powerful hug. “It’s okay. Don’t feel sorry. Your dad’s a strong man. He’ll be fine, okay?” Julie managed a nod into my shoulder. Her whole body quivered against me. “I’ll call a cab.” My car was still out of commission, dammit.

“I can take her to the airport if it’s okay,” Matt chimed in. I glanced at Julie, and she nodded again. It tore me up to see her on the verge of an emotional breakdown, but I couldn’t go with her back home. Her parents, or at least her mother, blamed me for the way Julie acted after her divorce. Never mind Julie was the one who came up with some of our wilder escapades in our college days.

In just a few short minutes our joyful Ladies Night Out had turned south. I sat in the backseat holding Julie close. Her dad always sent little notes to her on her birthday. Julie had saved each one in a scrapbook. A relationship I envied at times because I never had that special father-daughter thing.

Matt stayed silent, but every few minutes, his piercing blue eyes bore a delicious searing hole through me. It sent delightful shivers down my spine. I could drown in the heavenly depths of his eyes for hours. The Catholic guilt started to rise like the water in the
Red River
every spring. Here I was comforting my dear friend while rampant sexual experiences wiggled like a stripper on a pole in my head.

“Oh Patricia. How I’ve waited to taste you.” Matt pressed against her, his need shining bright as the heaven’s stars in his eyes. Slowly her dress unraveled at her feet, and Matt clutched her shoulder possessively as his lips ravished her body.

“We’re here.”

The sound of Matt’s voice caused my body to quiver, and my lip trembled as he offered his hand out to help me out of the car. I hesitated, afraid of what touching him would do to me. I dragged Julie along with me as a barrier against my wicked thoughts. I was here for her, dammit, not my hormones. Before she entered the zone for passengers only, I gave her another long hug and a kiss on the cheek. No matter what we joked about on our parents’ mannerisms, we loved them dearly. One call from my parents would have me on the first flight out as well.

My heart sank as she disappeared. I barely registered the chill in the air until Matt wrapped his arms around me. Before I could listen to the warning bells, my arms laced around his. My head leaned back to rest on his chest. With his biker boots on, I could feel the tickle of his breath on my neck. Matt ushered me to his car and into the front seat. I huddled close to him.

Julie was my rock, and I was hers. Without her, I wouldn’t know when to stop sloshing down the wine when we went out. I’d forget to order my pasta without the anchovies. I’d…

I’d be alone.

I clenched my jaw at my selfish ramblings. Julie’s father lay in the emergency room, possibly near death, and all I could think of was how I clung to her like a nitwit. All those stupid romance books I’d gone through, I’d read for her. She didn’t guilt me into reading them. With one failed marriage under her belt, Julie had me reading them to come to my own conclusion Romeo doesn’t exist in this day and age. Her ex Jack had ruined her for other men, and Julie only wanted non-commitment in her tastes for men. Deep down, though, we both wanted more.

“You two have never been separated, have you?” Matt asked, his tone soft as silk.

“Not since her marriage failed.” The rain splattered on the windshield just like the last time Matt and I were alone together. The dim lights of my apartment complex wiggled along his windshield as we sat in silence. I didn’t remember the drive home all, so deep in my misery.

Matt had turned the engine off. The slight chill in the air made me inch closer to him.

“I swear I’m not drunk, but you smell really nice, you know that?” With sigh of contentment, my head rested on his shoulder. He gave me a gentle squeeze.