The Boyfriend of the Month Club (18 page)

“God no!” Grace shuddered.

“Well, okay, good. Not that I thought . . . I mean . . .” He shook his head as if to clear it. “So how is it your fault?”

“It’s my fault because I should have seen it coming. I should have warned her about him. About the type of guy he is.”

“Because you’re psychic?” he said sarcastically.

Grace fiddled with the edge of her wineglass. “Because he cheated on her before they were married. And I knew about it and I never told her.”

Grace went on to tell him the whole sordid story, how a week before the wedding she’d stopped by Craig’s apartment one Saturday morning on her way to the store to talk to him about Sarah’s surprise bachelorette party, only to have the door answered by an attractive brunette wearing nothing but a T-shirt and pink underwear. Craig had insisted Carla was nothing but an old friend who had crashed on his couch the night before, but Grace wasn’t stupid.

“I thought about telling Sarah, but Craig promised me he’d tell her himself. And I thought . . . maybe it was best that way. To hear it from him, you know?”

Joe nodded.

“And I kept waiting for her say something, but she never did. I tried to tell her the night of the rehearsal dinner, but we were all having a good time . . . and I guess I really wanted to believe him when he told me that nothing had happened between him and Carla.

“Sarah seemed happy enough the first year they were married. Not ecstatic or anything, but I never saw them fight. And I thought, okay, it all worked out for the best and it would be crappy of me to rock the boat by telling her something that didn’t matter anymore. Then six months ago she walked into their house to find her husband in bed with guess who.”

Joe’s face tightened. “That must have been rough.”

Grace felt sick to her stomach whenever she remembered Sarah’s frantic phone call telling Grace what she’d discovered. Sarah had been inconsolable. “I’ve been cheated on too, so I kind of knew how Sarah felt, although my situation was way different.”

She told Joe about walking in on Felix and his exotic dancer and about Felix’s penchant for Céline Dion. Joe tried not to laugh but he couldn’t help himself.

“You couldn’t have been serious about this guy.”

“For a while I thought Felix might be the one. But it was my pride that was hurt more than anything. And . . . it left me thinking maybe I’m a bad judge of character. At least where men are concerned.” She looked him in the eye. “What about you? Have you ever been cheated on?”

He shook his head but he didn’t meet her gaze, and she wondered if there was something he wasn’t saying. Maybe because he hadn’t been a victim himself, there wasn’t anything he could add to this part of the conversation.

“If Sarah had found out Craig had cheated on her before the marriage, I
know
she would have called the wedding off. She’s going through this divorce because I was too big a coward to do what I should have done and warn my best friend off her rat-cheating fiancé. And now she’s all hush-hush with me about stuff and she’s having dinner with him out in the middle of nowhere, like she doesn’t want to get caught.”

“She’s a big girl, Grace. If she wants to get back with him, then that’s her decision. She already knows he’s cheated on her.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that he’s cheated on her at least
twice
, and right before the wedding. With the same woman. That’s a pattern, Joe. And I can’t let her go back into this marriage without telling her what I know.”

“How’s she going to take that?”

“Not good.”

Sarah’s stubborn and unforgiving
. She could hear Charlie’s voice say it over and over in her head.

“Sarah has a lot of pride. She’s been my best friend for twenty-five years and . . . it’s like I made a fool out of her. At least, that’s the way she’s going to see it.” Hot tears blurred her vision. “Sorry,” she said, wiping the wet from her eyes.

“Don’t be sorry,” Joe said. He looked conflicted, like he didn’t know what else to do or say. Crying did that to most guys. But he didn’t try to brush it off with a joke or change the subject because he felt uncomfortable.

“You’re right, though. You have to tell her,” he said eventually. “She might be angry at first, but she’ll be even angrier if she finds out on her own.”

She tried to pay for their drinks, since he’d paid for dinner, but he was faster with his wallet than she was with hers.

It wasn’t till her head hit the pillow that she realized she’d never confided the Craig story to anyone before Joe. Not to Ellen, and not even to Penny. Joe was a good listener, a rare trait in a man. It occurred to her that the last half of their “date,” the part in which they’d connected like real friends, was more intimate than the superficial flirting they’d done at the restaurant.

Later that night she woke up from a dream that had seemed so real, she’d been startled and, if she was being honest with herself, disappointed to discover that it wasn’t.

“Well, shit,” she muttered, punching her pillow back into shape. How was she ever going to be just friends with Joe if she couldn’t get that “hours of hot, sweaty sex” thing out of her head?

15

Players, Like Rakes, Amuse More in Literature Than They Do in Real Life

“Get a load of this.” Penny shoved a piece of paper under Grace’s nose. At the top of the sheet in bold type was the header:
Join Daytona Beach’s fastest growing female network
:
The Boyfriend of the Month Club
. The line below gave the time and location of their next meeting, which was tonight. In exactly fifteen minutes, to be precise.

“Where did you get this?” Grace asked.

Penny pointed to the front of the store, singling out a woman in her late thirties who looked busy examining the alligator tooth display. “She wanted to know if she was in the right place. She said she found it on the bulletin board in the women’s locker room at her gym.”

Grace studied the flyer. “One of Ellen’s friends from the college must have put these up.”

“Grace . . . I’m kind of with Sarah on this. I went along with this boyfriend club because it seemed fun, but honestly, I thought it was just for one night, maybe two at the most.”

They watched as a trio of women entered the store and asked Marty for directions to the club meeting. Marty guided them to the Hemingway corner. A minute later, another woman came in carrying a couple of bottles of wine and a box of paper cups. “Does your dad know about the meetings?” Penny asked.

“He knew about the book club meetings.”

“But we aren’t here discussing books. You have to admit, at the last meeting, that chick who went off on her ex—what was her name?”

“Stacey”

“Yeah, her. She seemed kind of unstable. When it was just the four of us, it was fine, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to let strangers in the store after hours. And we
definitely
shouldn’t let them bring in alcohol.”

“Don’t sweat it, Pen. There’s probably only going to be a few extra women. And I’ll make an announcement about the alcohol.” Grace was dying to ask her if she’d heard from Butch, but the last time Grace had brought him up, Penny had gotten tight-lipped and then slipped out for a smoke.

The few extra women turned out to be a lot more. There were only fifteen folding chairs in the storeroom, so Grace and Penny had to drag out the benches from the employee break room. They also had to push back the bookshelves to make room for all the seating. The second Ellen walked in the store, Grace grabbed her elbow and took her to the side.

“Have you seen this?” She showed Ellen the flyer.

“Isn’t it great? Janine did those during her lunch hour.”

“Ellen, there’re at least thirty women here tonight.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“Where am I supposed to put them all?”

Ellen frowned. “I didn’t think about that. We might need to bring extra folding chairs.”

“No more flyers. And no more members. This is too much,” Grace said, seeing the wisdom in Penny’s admonition.

“Okay, you’re right. I guess statistically, I can make do with thirty.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ellen opened her satchel, but instead of the familiar yellow legal pad, she pulled out a laptop. “To save time, I’m going to type up the reviews directly into a word processing program, then upload them into the Yahoo! file. Wait till you see the most exciting part.”

Grace peered at the document on the screen. She recognized it immediately. It was Ellen’s dissertation for the master’s degree she’d received a few years ago: “Undressing the Romantic Hero in Popular Literature
.
” Grace remembered proofing the paper for Ellen. Despite the sexy title, it was dullsville. Undressing hadn’t been meant literally, Ellen explained, after Grace had grumbled about the paper not living up to the title. It was a metaphor for delving deeper into literary archetypes.

“What’s so exciting about your research paper?”

Ellen’s eyes took on a familiar excited gleam. “I’m going to take it beyond the boundaries of this thesis. I’ve developed a program that takes the data from my paper and uses it to compare and contrast the characteristics of well-known literary figures against the characteristics of real live men. It’s like when you compared Felix to Peter Pan, and I compared Stacey’s ex, Chris, to Mr. Rochester, only this will be more objective.”

Grace thought about it a second. “That sounds kind of fun.”

“It’ll be a lot more than
fun
. It’s a predictor for how good a boyfriend candidate will be. Let me show you.” She brought up Felix’s file. “The key words we agreed upon for Felix were charming, egotistical, and childlike. Which, if left by themselves, would make Felix a classic Peter Pan.”

“Right,” said Grace.

“But we also agreed that Felix didn’t fit the Peter Pan mold. So I did some more analysis and realized we didn’t have enough descriptors. Three isn’t enough to give us an objective match. It’s the fourth descriptor that brings it all together. But even that won’t work unless the descriptor isn’t a tight enough word.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are a lot of different words that can be used to describe the same thing. For instance, your Felix—”

“Please don’t call him
my
Felix. He was
everybody’s
Felix.”

“Exactly!” Ellen pointed to the computer screen but all Grace could see were a bunch of adjectives jumping out at her. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but when you first met Felix he was funny and charming and he swept you off your feet. Felix is the modern contemporary of what used to be called a rake.”

Player equals rake. Yeah, that was Felix all right. “Go on.”

“So I went through a list of famous literary rakes, and voilà! It was so obvious. Felix is Henry Crawford from
Mansfield Park
! Remember the time right before you caught Felix in bed with his hoochie girl? You told me something was off. That Felix was acting weird. It’s like Fanny Price in
Mansfield Park
. She knew Henry Crawford was up to no good, she just didn’t have the proof until he ran off with Maria Bertram. Although actually, she was Maria Rushworth when that happened, but you get my meaning.”

“Which is? Honestly, Ellen, you’ve lost me.”

“Felix’s fourth descriptor word isn’t cheater, although he’s that too. But a better word to describe him is self-indulgent, which is different. The two of you had opposing work schedules. Felix stayed up late every night to close the restaurant and you got up early every morning to go into work and open the store, which made it hard for the two of you to find time to be together. And then you were out of town for a few days and instead of dealing with it, he took his selfish pleasure where he could because he simply couldn’t help himself, like a little kid who couldn’t wait for his dessert. Felix is exactly like Henry Crawford in
Mansfield Park
. One of Jane Austen’s more interesting villains, I think, but nevertheless, there you have it.”

Grace let it all sink in. For once, Ellen was really onto something.

“Wow! Ellen, you’re a genius. I totally remember that horrible scene where Fanny walks in on Henry Crawford and her half sister. Or what is it, her cousin? Anyway, you’re right. It was
exactly
like when I caught Felix in bed with his stripper. Felix is a Henry Crawford!”

“Grace, that’s the movie version of
Mansfield Park
, not the book. Jane Austen would never have written something so vulgar as to have her heroine catch someone in
the act.
But I’m not going to scold you for confusing the two. Not tonight anyway, because I’m simply in too good a mood. This revelation is going to allow us to use my research to help women avoid players like Felix Barberi.
Some
members of the English department thought my thesis was self-indulgent. But tell me this: how often can you say that a graduate thesis paper on literature can have a real-world practical purpose? I’m thinking about working up a description for a class. Who knows? Maybe they’ll let me teach it next semester.” Ellen glanced at her watch. “Time to start the meeting! Would you like to address the room, or should I?”

“Um, I think you should open the meeting, since we’ve got this new program in play. I could never explain it half as well as you. And can you tell everyone no alcohol, please? Penny and I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring it into the store.”

“You’re no fun,” Ellen said, but she was still beaming from talk of her computer program, so Grace knew she didn’t really mean it.

Grace took a seat next to Penny. Ellen stood and clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. Grace envisioned Ellen going through the same motions in front of her classroom and couldn’t help smiling.

“On behalf of the founding members, I’d like to welcome all of you tonight,” Ellen said, addressing the group. “May I have a show of hands if you’re new this evening?”

She pulled out the yellow legal pad (Grace just knew she couldn’t get rid of it all together) and passed it to the woman sitting to her left. “It looks like we have almost twenty new members. When this comes your way, please write down your name, your contact information, and most important, your e-mail address. Within the next twenty-four hours you’ll receive an Evite to join our Yahoo! group. This is how you can access the files.”