The Dirty Book Club(32)

Britt dialed 9-1-1.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling an ambulance!”

“Why? It was just a bump on the head. You look fine.”

Britt snickered. “It’s for you, dumb-ass.”

“Me?” M.J. knocked the phone from Britt’s hand. “I don’t need an ambulance.”

“I know, but you need a hospital and my electric golf cart won’t get us there.”

“Come.” M.J. began crawling toward the kitchen, finding comfort in the low center of gravity.

Britt followed, tracking chocolate all over the floor.

“Take my Mini,” she said, pointing up at her purse, which she’d left on the counter.

“It’s yours?”

“Yeah, but you can have it.”





CHAPTER


Eleven


Pearl Beach, California

Monday, June 20

Full Moon

THE FIRST FIFTEEN minutes M.J. spent at the Good Book had been fine, pleasant even. She sat in the reading lounge, sipped prosecco and flipped through her notes on Fear of Flying. She couldn’t wait to deconstruct Isadora Wing’s brazen affair with Adrian. Couldn’t wait to read the forty-two-year-old letter in the dust jacket of her book. Couldn’t wait for some company, having spent twenty days without Dan. And yet, all she did was wait.

Outside, the full moon was bright and bloated. Instead of casting an approving glow on the first gathering of the new Dirty Book Club, it mocked M.J. by shining a light on the three members who didn’t show; on Dan, who missed his connecting flight in Hong Kong and wouldn’t be home for another day; on her voice mail that hadn’t heard an apology from Gayle in over a week.

While Easton scurried about, returning errant books to their proper shelves, M.J. lifted her eyes to the chandelier and summoned her father, a shrewd investor who always knew when the market was about to collapse, when to get out. “I promised I’d give Pearl Beach a chance and I did,” she said. “I decorated the cottage while Dan was gone. I took a stand-up paddleboard lesson. I even joined a book club!”

The ceiling creaked. He was all ears.

“Yeah, well, don’t get too excited. I’m at our first meeting right now and no one is here.” She twisted the gold wedding bands on her thumb. “Dad, it was a mistake for me to leave City the way I did. I wasn’t thinking clearly and now I think I should accept Gayle’s offer and go back to New York before she changes her mind. I’m bored and lonely and the tap water here tastes like saliva.”

A bookmark, one of the hundreds that hung from the rafters, drifted to the floor. It read, Sorry, yesterday was the deadline for all complaints. M.J. laughed. Her mother, a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bra-straps kind of gal, must have been eavesdropping.

“I’m not complaining, Mom, I’m confused.” M.J. drained half a glass of prosecco in a desperate gulp. “If I go, I’ll lose Dan. If I stay, I’ll lose my mind. What am I supposed to do?”

The chandelier began to swing.

“Leave?”

The ceiling shook.

“Stay?”

The chandelier swung harder. Bookmarks began raining down from the ceiling. Either they wanted her to leave or this was the start of something biblical.

M.J. crawled under the coffee table and took shelter. If the movie San Andreas taught her anything it was that. “It won’t be long now,” she told her parents—an RSVP to the family reunion she assumed was decades away.

“There you are,” Easton said, poking his face under the coffee table.

“Earthquake!”

“Nah, it’s just Addie, stomping around her apartment.” He offered his hand.

“She’s home?”

Seething, M.J. began the climb to Addie’s apartment. The flat soles of her gladiator sandals reprimanding the stairs with resentful stamps. If only she had worn her Lanvins, those chunky square heels would have landed like anvils.

Then footsteps came toward her, carrying the satisfied spring of a boy who had just become a man.

“?’Sup?” he said, tucking in his Enchanted Florists uniform as he passed.

M.J. stomped harder.

“Back for more?” Addie cooed from the open door at the top of the landing. She wore a gauzy white cover-up that revealed her dark areolas like a botched surprise. “Oh, sorry,” she said, disappointed, “I thought you were Marilyn, the delivery guy.” She twisted her cinnamon-colored hair and fastened it with a chip clip.

“That guy’s name was Marilyn?”

“The tattoo on his back said Marilyn, so I’m going with it.”

M.J. swallowed her laughter as punishment. “Why did you blow off the meeting?”

“That’s tonight?”

Normally, M.J. would have fired back with something biting, then walked off with a smirk. An underdog who got the last word. But then what? Another night spent rearranging furniture, stalking Liz Evans on social media, and popping an Ambien at sunset? She couldn’t tolerate more solitude; how it coiled around her lungs and squeezed.

So, there she was. Plucked, showered, and dressed in a tasteful black jumpsuit. Ready to embrace the Dirty Book Club and its ragtag members. Only now had it occurred to her that they might not embrace her back.