Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back In the Burbs, by Tracy Wolff and Avery Flynn
The Rebound Surprise, by Laurel Cremant
The Things We Leave Unfinished, by Rebecca Yarros
Confessions in B-Flat, by Donna Hill
Follow Me Darkly, by Helen Hardt
The Spinster and the Rake, by Eva Devon
A Lot Like Love, by Jennifer Snow
Forever Starts Now, by Stefanie London
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Julie Hammerle. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
10940 S Parker Road
Suite 327
Parker, CO 80134
[email protected]
Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Stacy Abrams
Cover illustration and design by
Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Interior design by Toni Kerr
ISBN 978-1-64937-028-0
Ebook ISBN 978-1-64937-041-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition July 2021
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also by Julie Hammerle
Adult novels
Write Before Christmas
Knocked Up Cinderella
Young Adult novels
The Sound of Us
Any Boy But You
Artificial Sweethearts
Approximately Yours
For John, my partner in quarantine.
Thank you for a year of walks, food experiments, franchise Fridays, and hot tub happy hours.
For all the lonely people.
It’s Raining Men is a hilarious, heartfelt rom-com about finding love when you least expect it and discovering your own inner strength, however the story includes discussions of death of a loved one, mention of cancer treatments, and one scene of a character drinking to excess, so readers who may be sensitive to this, please take note.
Chapter One
Teddy Ruxspin Doctors
“Okay, what’s wrong?” Gayle Gale asked after I’d finished listening to her heart and lungs.
“Well, your chest sounds good, but your blood pressure is higher than I’d like it to be.” I wrapped my stethoscope around my neck.
“I was talking about you, Annie, not me. What’s with the weepy eyes?”
I asked all the patients in my concierge practice to call me Annie. I found it lowered the doctor-patient barrier in our relationship, making them more likely to contact me with potentially serious symptoms.
It also, unfortunately, had the side effect of encouraging them to ask me about my personal life.
I wiped my eyes with one hand as I made a note on her chart. “It’s just allergies.” I glanced up at my patient, whose furrowed brow illuminated the usually masked wrinkles on her light brown, sixty-something skin. She wasn’t buying a word out of my mouth. All day long at work, my eyes had been welling with tears for no reason, which was completely unprofessional and not at all like me. I’d been telling my patients I had seasonal allergies, but Gayle Gale, the Chicago news anchor legend, the badass woman who’d gotten a former mayor to admit live on camera to tax evasion, naturally saw right through me.
“No, it’s not. Spill it.”
“I honestly don’t know. It’s been happening out of the blue for no reason,” I said, chuckling. “Maybe it actually is allergies. Or maybe I’m extra sensitive to Tina’s new cleanse.” My assistant, despite my efforts to insist that she was a healthy young woman who already looked gorgeous, was trying a new fad she’d found on TikTok involving something like onions, garlic, cayenne pepper, saffron, and fish broth. That would make anyone’s eyes water.
“That’s not it.” My patient narrowed her gaze. “Man trouble?”
“Only if you count not having a man as man trouble.” I shook my head as I remembered I was in my office and not on my friend’s living room couch. Maybe I should rethink my stance on formality and make my patients call me Dr. Kyle. This whole overfamiliarity thing was blurring too many lines, even for a consummate professional like me. “Your high blood pressure—”
“Family health issues?”
“Yes, well,” I said, “obviously hypertension can be hereditary.”
“I meant your family,” Gayle said. “Is everyone well? Your mom, your brother, your adorable niece and nephew?”
“They’re all fine.” At a previous appointment, Gayle had charmed me into telling her about my family. She’d even watched a video of my niece dancing to that one song from Frozen. I helped Gayle lie down on the exam table. “Now, we have several medical options for hypertension, but equally important—”
“How about your roommate?” Gale said as I palpated her abdomen. “What was her name? Kerry?”
“Kelly,” I corrected her, “and she’s fine.” My face tightened, and I realized I was smiling. Dang it, she’d hit the bull’s-eye. Gayle was good. Too good. “She’s coming home tonight, actually.”
“Where’s she been?”
“She moved out to Galena with her parents for a few months to help her dad after knee surgery.” I paused. “Hey, by the way, did you know Kelly’s dad also has high blood pressure?”
“Many people do,” Gayle said. “That will be nice for you to have your roommate back in town. I’m sure you’ve missed her.”
The now-familiar sensation of my eyes stinging returned. I blinked away the tears as I helped Gayle sit up.
“Annie, sweetie.” Gayle squeezed my hand. “Tell me all ab
out it. I’m listening.”
I was fighting a losing battle here. “Gayle, if I tell you about it, will you finally let me say my piece about the dangers of high blood pressure?”
Gayle steepled her hands and nodded seriously. “I will.”
I sat down and rolled my chair closer to the exam table. “Okay. Kelly left a few months ago, and, as I’m a fairly introverted person, I didn’t think it would bother me that much. But I’ve spent most of the past twelve weeks either working or lying on my couch watching mind-numbing television, eating by myself, doing everything by myself, and honestly, the fact that she’s coming home, and it means I no longer have to feel this crushing loneliness, is a relief.” I wiped my eyes again. “Hence the tears.”
“And that’s it?” Gayle asked.
“That’s it,” I said, smiling at her. “As much as I enjoy spending most of my time with you and my other patients, I’m just really looking forward to seeing my friend again.” I grabbed a prescription pad. “For the hypertension, I want to start you off on—”
“Have you heard of Man on Main Street?”
I dropped my pen in my lap. I could feel my own blood pressure rising. “Of course.” Man on Main Street was a recurring segment during the news on her station, WTS TV.
“Darius is always looking for new, interesting people to interview around Chicagoland. Would you be interested in talking to him about being a concierge doctor?”
“I’m sorry?” I’d lost the conversation thread. We’d been talking about Kelly coming home, and then I was trying to get back on the high blood pressure topic, and now she wanted me to talk to her coworker about…?
“I think it would be great,” she said. “Whenever I tell people about your practice, they’re both confused and intrigued. I think you should let Darius do a segment on you.”
“If I agree to this, will you finally—finally—let me tell you about how your job stress and sodium intake might be affecting your health and how I’d like you to make sure you get regular exercise while also taking a thiazide diuretic?”
“Yes,” she said.
Even though going on TV was the absolute last thing I’d ever consider, a promise was a promise. And after Kelly came home tonight, I knew everything would be okay again. Life would get back to normal, and the two of us could joke about the utter absurdity of me going on television to talk about my practice. “Okay, then. Fine. Tell your coworker to call me about an interview.”
The things I was willing to do for my patients.
Chapter Two
Crimpin’ Ain’t Easy
“Alexa,” I said in the odd, authoritative voice I always used when I spoke to my virtual assistant, “shuffle songs from Phil Collins.”
No one could tell me I didn’t know how to party.
As the opening strains of “In the Air Tonight” pumped through my speakers, I made sure the house was ready for Kelly’s homecoming. I placed a vase of daisies (her favorite) on her bedside table. I made sure the entire bottom floor of my converted three-flat, which had served for the past five years as Kelly’s apartment, looked clean and tidy. I shoved my recently acquired stationary bike into an empty corner and artfully draped a throw blanket over it, and I arranged the TV remotes in a little basket to look like an inviting bouquet.
On the first floor, in the main part of the house, I set out guacamole that I’d purchased at Whole Foods on my way home from work and set two bottles of wine—white and red—on the living room coffee table next to three glasses and a wine opener. My phone buzzed in the pocket of my pajama pants—yes, we were going extra casual tonight—as I surveyed my handiwork.
“Yessi?” I said. I’d invited my other BFF from college, Yessi, over tonight to help welcome Kelly back to the city. I hadn’t spent much quality time with Yessi in the past few months, either. She had a baby about six months ago and was now back at work, juggling her child, her marriage, and her career as a high-powered corporate attorney. But tonight she said she’d be here for Kelly.
“Annie?” Yessi’s voice sounded panicked. “Olivia has a fever.”
“Oh no.” Yessi often called me with baby-related medical questions, and I was always happy to help—when I could. It had been way too long since I did my pedes rotation. “How high?”
“One hundred and one,” she said, “rectally. Since her doctor’s office is closed, Polly and I are taking her to the emergency room.”
“Hi, Annie!” I heard Polly, Yessi’s wife, a veterinarian, say on the other end.
“Hi, Polly!” My brain scanned through all the information I’d retained about infants and fevers. “How is Olivia behaving?”
“She’s crying a lot.” As if on cue, the baby let out a wail in the background on Yessi’s end.
“It’s most likely something simple,” I said reassuringly. “You’re doing the right thing taking her in. The doctors will get the fever down and will be able to tell you exactly what’s going on.”
“Thanks, Annie,” Yessi said. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to make it tonight.”
“Say hi to Kelly!” Polly shouted.
My heart sank. Yessi and I kept missing each other these days. “Will do!” I said as cheerfully as I could muster. “We’ll get together another time soon. Please keep me updated on Olivia and call if you have any questions.”
I set the phone down with a sigh and turned off “Sussudio.” Worried about Olivia and sad about not getting to see my friend, I was no longer in the mood for Phil. I grabbed one of the three wineglasses on the coffee table and returned it to the dining room hutch.
The doorbell rang.
“If this is a sales call…” I muttered to myself as I made my way over to the door. But when I opened it, I found Kelly standing there, eyes down on her phone.
She looked up, surprised, as if she hadn’t just rung my doorbell. “Annie!” she said finally, shoving her phone in her pocket and shooting me a dimmed-down version of the thousand-watt, toothy white smile I’d known since the very first day of college. Petite Kelly, with the big, curly blond hair and sun-kissed bronze face like a California surfer girl, fell into my arms, sobbing.
I squeezed her tight, resting my head on the top of hers, as her body convulsed against mine. “Oh my gosh, Kelly, what’s wrong? Is it your dad?”
She shook her head and mumbled something against my shoulder that I couldn’t hear.
I pulled away, holding her at arm’s length. “Say it again?”
She opened her mouth to speak just as my phone buzzed again in my pajama pants pocket. I held up a finger to stop. “Pause,” I said, “one second. Yessi’s taking Olivia to the emergency room.” I checked the caller ID on my phone. “Shoot.” I wrinkled up my nose. “It’s a patient. I have to take this.”
I answered the call—a former Chicago Bulls player who now did color commentary for one of the radio stations in town. He hurt his knee playing a pickup game with his kids in the driveway. I told him to ice it tonight and call an orthopedic specialist I knew in the morning if it wasn’t feeling better.
“Ugh,” I said, shoving my phone back in my pants and heading back into the living room. “I know it’s silly, but I always feel guilty when I have to send patients to a specialist. It’s like, what are they paying me for? Maybe it’s time I recognize I’m not superhuman.”
I paused in the doorway and watched Kelly down almost a full glass of red wine before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Kel?”
She turned toward me, eyes pink and bloodshot. Finally able to get a good look at her, I realized that she was a more muted and monochrome version of her usual self tonight. Kelly normally wore dresses and cute tops in bright, bold colors—reds, pinks, blues, yellows, sometimes all at once. She’d dress up every outfit with chunky jewelry and fun shoes. Tonight she wore a pair of boring black jeans under a faded pink sweatshirt. (
A sweatshirt!) She hadn’t put on a stitch of makeup, and her only hint of bling was a modest gold pendant around her neck.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She sat up straight, shoulders back. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I guess I miss my mom and dad. I’d spent so much time with them over the past few months—” She let out a huge sob, and I dashed to sit next to her on the couch. I took her hand in mine.
“I get it,” I said. “I was emotional all day at work today, knowing you were coming home. I’ve been…lonely.” I grinned at her. “But now we’re reunited, and things can finally get back to normal. For both of us.”
She burst into tears, dropping her head into her hands.
Crap. This was completely new and unexpected. Kelly loved her mom and dad, but the three of them had their issues, too. When she left home for college, she left for good. I had a hard time believing they were the real source of this despair.
“You want to put on a movie or something?” I asked.
She shook her head, her blond curls flopping around her shoulders.
“Play a board game?”
She scrunched up her nose.
I knew what I had to do. I wasn’t trying to make my introverted self feel better. I had to think like Kelly—suggest something she might want to do.
“Um…there’s a new bar nearby…”
Her eyes lit up.
“Maybe we can put on makeup, get dressed up, and…do that?”
Kelly leaped off the couch and right into my chest, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Yes, Annie. Thank you! I think a night out is just what I need.”
I guess I was changing out of my comfy pants.
Chapter Three
We Didn’t Start the Bonfire of the Vanities
“Oh my god!” Kelly grabbed a flyer off the table just inside the bar. “They have trivia on Thursday nights! We should totally go next week. Remember when you, Yessi, and I used to do trivia all the time?”
“I do,” I said, yanking down the hem on the very short hot pink dress I’d agreed to wear because Kelly said it would make her happy to see me in something, quote, “not the color of decomposition.”
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