The Boyfriend of the Month Club (6 page)

Penny stood. “While you guys discuss this, I’m just going to step outside for a minute.”

“So you can smoke?” Grace said.

“Pen! You’re not smoking again, are you?” asked Sarah. “What happened?”

“I knew I smelled cigarettes in here,” Ellen said, sniffling delicately.

“I thought you said you smelled beer,” Grace said.

“That too.”

The last crisis that had caused Penny to take up smoking was when Butch had bought his brand-new Harley motorcycle. Butch was Penny’s on-again, off-again boyfriend of the past two years. “What’s going on with Butch?” Grace asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Penny chanted.

“You two aren’t breaking up again, are you?” Sarah asked.

“The only thing I want to talk about right now is
The Great Gatsby
. Because
I
read it,” Penny declared smugly.

“Well, I want to talk about anything but
The Great Gatsby
,” Grace shot back.

“Okay, so maybe
The Great Gatsby
and
The Last of the Mohicans
are a bit passé,” admitted Ellen. “I was just trying to inject a little intellectual stimulation into our Saturday nights.”

“I don’t know about you, Ellen, but I need a different kind of stimulation on my Saturday nights,” Grace said.

Sarah sighed. “Me too.”

“We could always meet on Thursdays,” Penny suggested.

“Look at us! We’re four reasonably attractive, intelligent, single—” Grace looked at Sarah. “
Almost
single women, and what are we doing on a Saturday night at”—she paused to glance at her wristwatch—“nine thirty p.m.? We’re at a book club meeting. What does that say about us?”

“That we’re losers?” Ellen said.

“I’ve thought about that. But all four of us? I refuse to believe it. It’s
got
to be the men we’re dating.” She stood and began to pace the Hemingway corner. Little bits of mud fell off her shoes, dirtying the floor, but Grace didn’t care. She’d mop it up later. “I spent all day looking forward to my date with Brandon. I even borrowed a dress from Sarah.” She stopped and gave Sarah a pointed look. “Which was totally sweet of you, but don’t
ever
let me borrow anything from you again. You wear a petite, for God’s sake!” She resumed her pacing. “During my lunch hour I got a mani and a pedi and purposely didn’t eat anything all day just so I could look good tonight, and for what? To be stood up at Chez Louis where
guess who
is the manager? Felix Barberi!”

Sarah’s mouth dropped open. “You ran into Felix tonight? No wonder you don’t want to talk about it.”

“For someone who doesn’t want to talk about it, she sure is talking about it,” Penny muttered.

“Get this. Felix is worried that his cheating on me damaged my self-esteem.”

“What?” Ellen gasped. “He did
not
say that!”

“Oh, it gets better.” Grace spent the next fifteen minutes filling them in on the night’s activities, including showing them her chipped tooth.

The three of them looked stunned. Then Penny started to giggle, which made Sarah laugh, and even Ellen smiled really big. Grace had to admit, if you weren’t the one it had all happened to, it might seem kind of funny.

Ellen was the first one to get serious again. “You really don’t notice the tooth unless you point it out. Just don’t show your mother. My mom still goes crazy over the fact that she spent five thousand bucks fixing my teeth and I never wore my retainer.”

“Trust me, my mom won’t find out, because first thing Monday morning I’m getting this thing filled or capped or whatever they have to do. It’s nothing but a bad reminder of one of the worst nights of my life.”

Sarah shook her head like she couldn’t believe it. “Brandon always seemed so sweet in Zumba class.”

“Brandon Farrell might look good on the outside, but on the inside? Ha! If he were a book, you wouldn’t get past the first page.”

“Instead of spending our Saturday nights talking about books, we should talk about the men we’ve gone out with. I guarantee you it’d be a whole lot more interesting,” Sarah said with a laugh.

Grace blinked. “Sarah, you’re a genius!” She waved her hand at Ellen’s notepad. “Write this down: Brandon Farrell, thirty-two years old. Brown hair, brown eyes, investment banker. Never been married.”

Ellen jotted it down. “What’s this for?”

“It’s Brandon’s stats. He’s our first critique.”

“Critique on what?” Ellen asked.

Grace smiled at the little group. “Ladies, I propose that we follow Sarah’s most excellent suggestion and turn our book club into a boyfriend club.”

For a few seconds, no one said anything.

Finally Penny shook her head. “I think talking to Gator Claus has helped loosen a few screws in your head.”

“A boyfriend club? What purpose would that serve?” Ellen asked.

“Do you know how many hours I’ve spent jumping around, sweating to Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine? If I hear ‘
Come on shake your body baby do the Conga’
one more time I’m going to puke.”

Sarah giggled. “Darlene does love that one,” she said, referring to their Zumba instructor’s penchant for eighties hits. “But two months of Zumba class have really paid off. Your legs look better now than they did in high school.”

Grace thought briefly about Rosie Dimples’ cheesy opening line. “Thanks, but you’re missing the point. Daytona Beach’s most eligible bachelor or not, if I had known what a creep Brandon Farrell was I would have never given him the time of day. Don’t you see how empowering this will be?” Grace said, her voice rising with enthusiasm. “We’re taking control of our destinies! If Speedway Gonzalez can get on the air every morning and belittle the women of Daytona Beach, then we can get a club together and get back some of the power jerks like him take away from us.”

“I hate Speedway,” Ellen said. “He’s nothing but a misogynistic pig. My friend Janine, who teaches psychology, says he must have deep unresolved mommy issues.”

“Between the four of us, we know . . . what?” said Grace. “At least a dozen more single women? Think of all the men we’ve dated collectively! We could build a dossier on these guys. You don’t run out and buy a book without reading a review or getting a recommendation, do you?”

“Sometimes I go by the cover,” Sarah admitted. “But I always read the first couple of pages too.”

“Wouldn’t it be awesome to meet some guy and know in advance what kind of boyfriend he’ll be? To know whether it’ll be worth going out with him or not?” Grace persisted.

Penny tossed down the rest of her screwdriver. “Butch is quitting his job at the repair shop to tour the country on his Harley.” She met Grace’s gaze head-on. “And he wants me to go with him.”

“Are you going to do it?” Sarah asked.

“I’m thirty-two years old. I have a car loan and four credit cards on which I’m shuffling minimum payments. Butch says I should sell my car and all my furniture and we can live off the road.”

“It sounds kind of romantic,” Ellen said wistfully.

Penny reached for the last oatmeal cookie. “You don’t think it’s crazy?” she asked Grace.

If Penny went on the road with Butch then she wouldn’t be working at the store. Penny had been at Florida Charlie’s ever since she’d arrived in Daytona Beach after moving from Minnesota almost fifteen years ago. Grace had never considered the idea of Penny quitting before. She tried to imagine what the shop would be like without Penny. Some days the only thing that kept Grace sane was Penny’s sarcasm.

“You have at least a month’s paid vacation coming. And I would hold your job. You could take a leave of absence, if you wanted to do it, like . . . on a trial run,” Grace said.

Penny seemed to think about it for a few seconds. “Next month is December, and the tourists will start coming down for the holidays. And then before you know it, it’ll be February and that means Speed Week, and I couldn’t leave you in a lurch like that. Besides, this just shows me that Butch isn’t ready to settle down. And frankly, I am. Maybe it’s best this way. We can make a clean break, you know?”

Grace couldn’t help but feel a selfish rush of relief. But if Butch were truly the right man for Penny, wouldn’t he care about what she wanted too?

Sarah made them all another round of screwdrivers. “I always thought you and Butch would be forever.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I thought about you and Craig.”

“The cad,” Grace added, because that’s what they’d all called him for so long now the nickname had stuck.

“I think Grace is on to something,” Ellen said. “Maybe this boyfriend club
is
what we need to empower us. I know my friend Janine would totally be on board.”

Grace raised her drink in the air. “Ladies, may I propose a toast? I officially call the first boyfriend of the month club meeting to order.”

“Hear, hear,” Penny said.

And with that, they all chugged down their drinks.

“Now,” Grace said, “back to Brandon Farrell . . .”

4

La Lechuga y el Tomate

Grace walked into St. Bernadette’s Catholic Church, dipped her fingers into the holy water, and made a hasty sign of the cross. She slipped into the left side of the third pew from the front, the same pew the O’Bryan clan sat in every Sunday at noon. The clan consisted of herself, Pop, Mami, Abuela, and Grace’s brother, Charlie. Grace supposed you really couldn’t call a family of five a clan, but if the definition of the word included “tightly knit group who poked into one another’s business all the time,” then the O’Bryans definitely qualified. Only today, their clan seemed to have added a member.

Grace zeroed in on the tall, willowy, twentysomething standing next to her brother on the opposite end of the pew. “Who’s the redhead?” Grace whispered to her mother in Spanish. Growing up in a bilingual household had its advantages.

Abuela, who was sitting on the other side of Mami, leaned over. “You’re late,” she scolded.

“Just by a minute. Father Donnelly must have started early.” Grace blew a conciliatory kiss in Abuela’s direction. Abuela caught the air kiss and pressed it to her thin cheek.

“Her name is Phoebe and she’s a lawyer at Charlie’s firm. Apparently, they’ve been dating almost two months now,” said her mother. “You’d have met her if you were here on time.”

“Must be serious if he brought her to Mass.”

Her mother raised a skeptical brow, then turned her attention back to Father Donnelly and the Penitential Rite. Ana Alvarez O’Bryan took the Mass seriously. And she expected her daughter to as well.

Charlie’s redhead caught Grace staring at her and smiled. It was a hopeful, friendly “please like me” kind of smile. Grace mentally sighed and smiled back at Charlie’s newest soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend. This one must have it bad—sucking up to the family at Sunday Mass. Not that Grace blamed her. To most women her brother would seem like a catch. Charlie was a thirty-three-year-old handsome, straight, single attorney. He was also self-centered and a bit of a mama’s boy, but it took most women at least three months to figure that part out. Charlie had another month before Phoebe called it quits. Which she would. Because they always did. Charlie made sure of it.

Maybe this time, though, things would be different. She tried to catch Charlie’s eye, but he kept his gaze straight ahead. Charlie could go to Vegas and leave a millionaire; his poker face was that good. But Grace knew her brother better than anyone. One look at him and Grace would know if Phoebe was the one or not.

She sent up a silent prayer to St. Anthony.
Please, St. Anthony, let Charlie find a nice girl and settle down. Not so much for him—because, honestly, I’m not sure he deserves it—but because it would really make Abuela and Mami happy
.

Technically, St. Anthony was the patron saint of lost items. Grace figured lost causes was close enough, and if ever there was a lost cause, it was the hope that Charlie would settle down. When in doubt which saint to pray to, St. Anthony was Abuela’s go-to guy. Grace figured it couldn’t hurt.

It wasn’t till Grace got in line to receive Communion that she noticed Sarah sitting by herself in the front pew. Ever since Sarah and Craig had split, Sarah had been going to church with her family again, but they went to eight a.m. Mass, which Abuela labeled barbaric. Only chickens and old people are up that early, Abuela said. Abuela, who was eighty-two, didn’t count herself a member of either group.

Grace caught Sarah’s gaze on her way back to her seat. Sarah hadn’t gotten up to receive Communion, which was unusual. Maybe Sarah had stopped taking Communion because of the divorce. Something about that didn’t sit well with Grace.

“Why didn’t you take Communion?” Grace asked her the second they were both outside the church.

“Who named you head of the Communion police?”

“Is it because of the divorce? Did you go to Confession and Father Donnelly told you you can’t have Communion anymore? Have you thought about an annulment?”

Father Donnelly was a nice man, but he was a Catholic priest first and he played strictly by the rules. Grace herself had avoided confession for at least three years now. Not that she’d committed any biggies. No murder or theft or coveting anybody’s anything for her. But she was tired of repeating the same banal sins over and over. And the sins that were bigger, she had no intention of telling Father Donnelly. Those were between her and God. Besides, confession was supposed to make you feel better. Only in Grace’s case she always ended up feeling worse about herself.

“It’s called reconciliation now. And it’s supposed to be private.”

“The creep
cheated
on you, Sarah. What are you supposed to do? Forgive and forget? Surely the Church has to make an allowance for stuff like that.”

“Father Donnelly hasn’t said a word to me, so you can retract your claws. I didn’t take Communion because I didn’t want to.” Before Grace could respond, Sarah pointed to Phoebe. “Who’s the Amazon with Charles in Charge?”

Grace followed Sarah’s line of vision to see Abuela introducing Phoebe to Father Donnelly, who was heartily pumping her hand up and down. Judging by the gleam in Father Donnelly’s eyes, he looked like he was already mentally scheduling Phoebe and Charlie’s wedding Mass.