The Dirty Book Club(7)

Katie is right about Hot Malcolm. And Hot Malcolm says I look like an average-sized Elle Macpherson, so we hit it off instantly. Between shots, Katie is making out with her boyfriend, and Hot Malcolm is telling me the stories behind his assortment of silver rings. We’re contemplating a karaoke bar when my phone rings. The number is blocked. I send it to voice mail. I order another round of shots.

My phone rings again.

I do a shot.

It rings again.

I finally answer.

There’s been an accident . . . Long Island Expressway. A truck driver was texting . . . He hit Dad’s junky old Audi . . . it spun . . . slammed into an SUV . . . no airbags . . . everyone killed instantly.

If only I went to the Montblanc store.

If only I bought that pen . . .

If only . . . If only . . . If only . . .

M.J. closed her tear-soaked journal, curled into the corner of her couch, and sobbed like it happened yesterday. Dan rubbed her feet with his warm doctor hands, injecting compassion into her bloodstream with his magical medical touch. M.J. didn’t know if she should unleash on him for crashing her pity party or write a romance novel about it. She did know that, Dan or no Dan, it hurt like hell.





CHAPTER


Three


New York City, New York

Friday, April 22

Full Moon

TWO MOANS AND it was over.

Ahhhhweeeeuhhh. Ahhhhweeeeuhhh.

There was a time when M.J. would have turned inward for hours and searched for the best way to describe the sound of concert tickets ribboning through her paper shredder. Car tires spinning on ice . . . Shouting, “Are we here?” into a kazoo . . . A sheep passing a kidney stone . . . But these days she flatly referred to it as “another set of complimentary tickets she was too busy to use.”

Thirty-five floors below her office at City magazine, brake lights strobed to the beat of start-and-stop traffic. Yellow cabs honked. Buses screeched to a lazy stop. New Yorkers rushed, dined, danced, traded, designed, debated, and created. And M.J., a ghostly reflection in her window, floated above it all.

“Delegate!” said Nicole from graphics as she passed by the open door.

M.J. swiftly raised her middle finger above the rising towers of submissions and proofs that crowded her desk like the Gotham City skyline. It was a playfully pat response to her coworkers’ needling reminders that M.J. had a competent staff and a sentinel of interns at the ready. She didn’t have to do it all.

But she did.

Work was her escape. Deadlines were her lifelines. When she was editing other people’s stories she forgot about her own. That was Dr. Cohn’s explanation, not hers. M.J. didn’t have time for explanations. A hoisted middle finger would have to do.

“Guess where I am?” Dan asked, minutes later over Skype. Bare-chested and dressed in butter-yellow surf trunks, he was perched on the railing of an outdoor deck holding a bottle of Dos Equis; the emerald-colored bottle green as the ocean behind him. A pair of mirrored aviators resting on top of his head.

“Spring break?” M.J. tried, though she didn’t have time for games. Truth? She assumed he was calling to wish her luck on her soon-to-be-official promotion and that’s why she accepted the call. His thoughtfulness was irresistible; one of the few things that could tear her away from her prospectus on the future of City magazine. Not that anyone was expecting it. But they would. And when they did, she’d be ready.

“Nope. Guess again.”

“Dan, I—”

“The cottage,” he said. “We got it! I closed escrow today.”

M.J. softened. Whether Dan genuinely considered his accomplishments theirs, or he used we to keep her from feeling alone in the world, didn’t matter. His use of inclusive pronouns gave M.J. a sense of belonging that made her smile out loud.

“Congratulations, Dr. Hartwell!” she beamed. “I can’t wait to see—”

A woman, age twenty-eight or maybe thirty-four, wearing a black sports tank and Lycra leggings in performance pink, bounced into frame. “I can’t find my keys!” She tipped over the railing to check the sand. Her suspiciously thick Victoria’s Secret hair spilled forward as if helping her search.

Dan, respectfully avoiding eye contact with her high-definition ass, offered to check the kitchen. “Hold on a sec,” he told M.J. as he set down his iPad. A prop plane dragged a banner through the optimistic blue sky: REGGAE AT THE OASIS!

M.J. snuck a quick peek of herself in the chat box. Her complexion was pigeon gray compared to their radiant California glows. Summoning the poor girl’s blush, she pinched her cheeks and accidentally scratched the left side of her face.

“Found them!” the woman announced while M.J. applied pressure to the wound with a coffee-stained Starbucks napkin.

“Who was that?” she asked when Dan finally returned.

“Britt Riley. My Realtor.”

“Well, Britt Riley is going to get a yeast infection if she keeps wearing her exercise clothes to work.”

“They’re moisture wicking!” Britt called as she left.

Dan winced.

“Sorry,” M.J. mouthed, cheeks hot.

“Are you okay?”

“Well, I just insulted your Realtor—”

“No, you have a scratch on your face and . . . when’s the last time you ate?”