Scot on the Rocks
( Brooke Miller - 1 )
Brenda Janowitz
When her ex-boyfriend, Trip, gets engaged to Hollywood's latest It Girl, Manhattan attorney Brooke Miller plans to attend the wedding. Who says a modern girl can't stay friends with her ex? Besides, Brooke's got her sexy Scottish fiancé, Douglas, to take as her date. Okay, so maybe he's not exactly her fiancé, but they're living together in his apartment, so she'll be getting the ring any minute, right? Wrong.
After a fight leaves her without a boyfriend (much less a fiancé) just days before the wedding, Brooke faces the ultimate humiliation of attending her ex-boyfriend's nuptials alone. Desperate to find a replacement to fill Douglas's kilt, Brooke concocts an outrageous plan to survive the wedding and win the man of her dreams, all with her dignity ever-so-slightly intact.
Brenda Janowitz
Scot on the Rocks
How I survived my
ex-boyfriend’s wedding with
my dignity ever-so-slightly intact.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Sherry and Bernard Janowitz, my parents. Without your love and support, I would be nothing. And to my brother, Sammy, and my sister-in-law, Stephanie, too. You are my family, but you are also my close friends. All four of you are always there to help me bounce ideas around, to brainstorm with me, and just generally make my life better. I appreciate you more than you can possibly know — thank you.
Thank you to Mollie Glick, my amazing agent. You were the first person who believed in my writing (besides my parents, that is. And my brother and sister-in-law, but the first person in publishing. You know what I meant. And, geez, learn to take a compliment, would you!?!). You helped me navigate the tricky waters of getting a first novel published, and I am so grateful for all of your advice and guidance along the way.
Thank you to Selina McLemore, my fabulous editor. When Scot came to you, it truly found its perfect home. Your comments and suggestions were always spot on — I always knew that I was in excellent hands every step of the process.
Thank you to Grandma D for being one of my earliest readers and for letting me borrow your maiden name.
Many thanks to Shawn Hecht, my best friend and first reader, for your support and encouragement. You may not be an objective reader of my writing, but you are an amazing friend, which is far more important.
Many thanks to JP Habib for your constant encouragement and willingness to read draft after draft. I can’t wait to be thanked in your first novel.
Special thanks go to Aunt Myrna, Robin Kaplan, Lauren Lindstrom, Jessica Shevitz Rauch, Jennifer Rauch, Greer Gilson Schneider, Esther Rhee, Donna Gerson, Tami Stark and all of my great relatives, friends and wonderful readers of early drafts of this novel (it’s totally different now, so even though you read it before, you should still buy it).
xoxo,
Brenda
To all of my ex-boyfriends.
Really.
You’ve given me endless amounts
of material about which to write.
Prologue
A recent New York Times article said that “new love can look like mental illness.” Really. That’s a quote. Actual real live neuroscientists studied brain scan images and found that falling in love prompts brain activity akin to a blend of mania, dementia and obsession. (And neuroscientists are, presumably, really, really smart people, so you can totally believe them.) These scientists found that the drive for romantic love in humans is similar to their drives for hunger, thirst or even a drug craving — a drive that is so strong, it can be stronger than even the will to live. That falling in love is the most irrational of all human behaviors.
So, in my pursuit of love, can I really be expected to behave rationally? I don’t think so. I mean, it’s a scientific fact!
1
As I walked back to my apartment that day, on my way home from work, I had a feeling that nothing could go wrong. You know that feeling you get when everything seems to be right with the world? When the planets seem to be in alignment? One of those days when you’re actually running on time, your apartment is (relatively) clean, and you haven’t gotten into an argument with your mother/best friend/boss/therapist in at least a week? That was exactly how I felt as I strolled home from work down Mercer Street to my apartment on 301 Prince Street.
I had left my office that evening at 8:30 p.m., which — at Gilson, Hecht and Trattner, the large Manhattan law firm where I work — is actually considered early, so I was feeling as if I had the whole night ahead of me. And I was going home to pick up my gorgeous Scottish boyfriend so that we could go out and meet friends for supper at some fabulous little downtown brasserie where everyone is European and the waiters only speak French, so I could hardly wait. I had the perfect New York City evening planned out.
Since I usually got out of work closer to 9:00 p.m. than 5:00 p.m., I considered myself lucky to have a boyfriend who liked to eat dinner late. I once dated a math teacher who left work at 4:00 p.m. and was in bed by ten. That relationship was destined to fail. Ditto for the guy who traded foreign something or others who started his day at 3:00 a.m. and ate his dinner before I even thought about getting lunch. My boyfriend, Douglas, on the other hand, thought that people who ate dinner before 8:00 p.m. were uncivilized.
I walked into the lobby of my apartment building — the poshest building in all of Soho — with a skip in my step. The Soho Triumphe, a building so fancy that, in addition to its staff of eight doormen, it boasts a twenty-four-hour concierge who can get you into any restaurant in Manhattan (not like Douglas ever needed any such help). It even has in-house dry cleaning, like at a hotel. I said hello to the evening doorman who, despite the fact that I had moved into Douglas’s apartment a full two years ago, still couldn’t quite remember my name.
“Um, 32G?” he asked with a pained expression that indicated to me that he was thinking, at least, very very hard about who I was. I nodded my head yes and pulled my hair out of the bun I usually wore at work while he checked his book for deliveries. Douglas loved my hair — dark brown with natural auburn highlights that was so long it fell down my back to just below my bra strap — so I always took it down right before I got up to our apartment.
The doorman handed me a mountain of dry cleaning — five custom-made Italian suits (Douglas’s), five monogrammed shirts (Douglas’s) and one skirt (mine). I checked the mail and took out four bills (Douglas’s) and the Barneys New York Spring Look Book (mine)…or maybe it was Douglas’s. You never could tell with European men.
Balancing it all in the crook of my arm, with my oversize work bag forcing my body to lean perilously to the right, I made it to the elevator just as the door was about to close. I kicked my foot out and stopped the door with my leg. Inside, I could see a tiny little man furiously pressing the “door close” button.
“You could lose a limb trying to get to your apartment,” I said to the man with a laugh. Rather than being embarrassed for not holding the elevator for me, he looked annoyed that I had made it in.
“Or you could just wait for the next elevator,” he replied under his breath. And they say that chivalry is dead.
With my free arm, I pressed the button for thirty-two. My work bag slid down my shoulder, catching my long hair underneath the strap. I tried to jump up to release my hair, turning my head quickly to the left as I did so. The dry cleaning began to slip from my grip and I begged it not to fall, whispering “We’re almost there,” to it as if talking to a small child. The man looked at me, his expression saying, “The economy must really be bad if our co-op board let this woman into the building.”
But I didn’t care. The night would still be perfect. No doubt I would get back to my apartment,
and Douglas would be waiting for me with open arms. Seeing me with all of my packages, he would grab them from me, throw them on the couch and kiss me passionately. In his charming Scottish accent, he would say, “Darling, I missed you so much today I could barely stand it,” or something as equally romantic and heartfelt and we would go meet our fabulous friends for a fabulous evening out. On our way to the restaurant, he would turn to me and say, “How is it that you look even more beautiful after working a full ten-hour day?”
I bet that that tiny little man in the elevator didn’t have a gorgeous Scottish boyfriend to go home to. Or, actually, maybe he did. He was wearing really, really nice shoes.
But I did. I walked in the door to my apartment, starving to death (because, let’s face it, I’m totally uncivilized), and before I even had a second to put down our dry cleaning, my gorgeous Scottish boyfriend broke up with me.
Normally, my life isn’t this complicated. You see, I’m a simple girl with simple hopes. Up until two weeks ago, all I really wanted in life was for my boyfriend Douglas to buy an engagement ring. And he did! He just didn’t give it to me. But I was fine. Even though the breakup was difficult, I remained very dignified.
Well, not so much dignified as a screaming crying mess. But it’s not as if I embarrassed myself or anything. Unless you’d call throwing yourself at the tails of someone’s suit jacket embarrassing. Which, luckily for me, I do not. We had a very mature conversation, really, if you think about it. I sweetly said, “Please don’t go! Please don’t leave me!” Okay, so maybe I was screaming it at the time, but you get where I was going with that one.
“I’m sorry, Brooke,” Douglas said. “It’s not you. It’s me. You are an amazing girl. You have so much to offer. It’s just that this doesn’t feel right. It’s just not the time for us.”
Now isn’t that mature? So, I answered him in kind.
“And it is the time for you and that — that — bimbo? What the hell is her name?”
“Beryl.”
“That’s not even a naaaame!” I bellowed.
“Brooke, let’s not get hysterical,” Douglas said. Hysterical? I was, like, so not hysterical. “Can’t we make this friendly? Can’t we try to still be friends?”
“Okay. You’re right. Friends.” See how mature I was being?
“Right then,” he said, sounding very Scottish. How I loved that accent. “I’ll be going.”
This may have been the part where I lunged for the tails of his suit jacket and he then dragged me about twenty feet to the door.
“No!” I was screaming. “No, please, no!” Okay, yes, now that I’m telling you about this, I distinctly recall being dragged across the floor screaming, “Don’t go!”
Oh, please. As if you never did that, too.
As a last ditch effort, I cried, “You can’t do this! Please don’t go! It isn’t right!” In an instant, his expression changed. I’m getting through to him, I thought. I lightened my viselike grip on the tails of his suit jacket.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t go. It isn’t right.”
I shook my head in agreement and breathed a sigh of relief. As visions of wild, passionate makeup sex floated through my mind, he said, “After all, I own the apartment.” And with that, he opened the door.
I should never have let go of the tails of his jacket.
2
Really, I blame the breakup on Trip’s wedding. That’s when everything started to go downhill between Douglas and me. And what’s worse, everyone I know thought that I shouldn’t have gone to the wedding in the first place. Somehow, everyone who knew me just knew that Trip’s wedding would be the end of Douglas and me. (Except little old me, of course.) I really hate being a foregone conclusion.
When I told my mother that I was going to Trip’s wedding, she said, “Trip’s wedding? Trip who?” (As if Jewish girls from Long Island know that many men named Trip.) “Trip from law school Trip? What woman, in her right mind, would want to go to that?”
Vanessa, my best friend from law school, initially RSVP’d no to the wedding, since she assumed that I wouldn’t want to attend. When she found out that I wanted to go, she later called Trip to tell him that her “big case” had settled and that she and her husband, Marcus, would be there — but not before asking me approximately 472 times if I “wanted to talk about it?”
And when I told the partner I worked for at my firm that I would be out of town for a four-day weekend to take my boyfriend to L.A. to go to Trip’s wedding, even he asked me, “Why the hell would you want to do that?”
I could have sworn that I even saw my therapist look at me sideways when I told her that I was going to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding.
Okay, so I understand that this isn’t exactly your typical “girl goes to wedding” kind of situation. But, just because Trip is my ex-boyfriend from law school doesn’t mean that I care more about this wedding or am more nervous about this wedding, or that this wedding is any different from any other wedding in any way at all! Because it’s not. Trip’s wedding is just another wedding. And Trip is just another friend of mine. Even if he is my ex-boyfriend.
What’s an ex-boyfriend anyway? Everyone has an ex-boyfriend. Everyone. I mean, even some lesbians I know have them. Nothing special about them, right? I don’t care any more or less about him just because he’s my ex-boyfriend. He’s just a person. And staying friends with your ex is a piece of cake. I barely ever think about him and how he may or may not have been my last chance at happiness in this cruel and unforgiving world.
Really. I have the satisfaction of having a great career and a great independent life filled with fabulous friends and, of course, even more fabulous shoes. I am such a woman of the new millennium that I can go work a full ten-hour day, keep in touch with friends through e-mail, do a few errands on the way to meet my friends for dinner, and then go meet cute guys over martinis at the bar after I eat. All in three-and-a-half-inch heels. I am such a woman of the millennium that I can do anything, even things that previous generations would have thought completely impossible — Betty Friedan be damned! I can even stay friends with an ex-boyfriend.
And it’s not like Douglas was jealous or anything. Douglas wasn’t really the type to ever get jealous. He was far too manly and European for such things.
When I told Jack, my best friend from Gilson Hecht, about Trip’s wedding, he simply said, “You and Douglas are going to break up.”
“What?” I practically screamed as I slammed the door to his office shut and sank into his visitor’s chair. His computer screen was turned slightly off center and I could see in the reflection of his window that he was working on his fantasy football league.
“Ignore me. I don’t even know what I’m saying,” he said, one eye still on his computer screen as he flipped it back to the brief he was drafting. “I think it’s great if you can go to your ex-boyfriend’s wedding. In fact, if we had dated and then broke up, I would fully expect you to come to my wedding.”
“We did date and break up,” I reminded him, picking up the silver paperweight from his desk and turning it slowly in my hands. It was engraved Congratulations on Your Graduation and signed With Love from all three of his older sisters.
“One kiss does not constitute us dating and breaking up,” he said, baby blues now burning into me, as he brushed his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. This particular conversation always made Jack nervous for two reasons. The first was that he was the one who called things off, and being the gentleman that he was, he never liked to do anything that would make a woman unhappy. The second was that he hated the implication that he would ever act in such an unprofessional manner by running around kissing associates who were junior to him.
I love bringing this conversation up with him.
“You say potato….” I said as he snatched the paperweight from my hands. I moved my attention to the sterling-silver picture frame that housed a photo of Jack and his parents at the swearing-in ceremony to the New York State Bar. It alway
s struck me as so odd that Jack’s father was the only one smiling.
“I’m sorry I said that you would break up with Douglas. If you want, to make it up to you, I will tell you your fortune,” he said, picking up the Magic 8-Ball that was at the end of his desk. He’d had that Magic 8-Ball since I first came to the firm. While most people would be satisfied to let it sit nostalgically on the edge of their desk, Jack actually used his. Since coming to the firm as a first-year associate, Jack and I had been staffed together on nearly every case I worked on — me the junior associate and he the senior for five years running — and we would often consult the Magic 8-Ball for our most pressing decisions:
“Magic 8-Ball, should we order in Chinese for dinner tonight?”
“Magic 8-Ball, are we going to have to work this weekend?”
“Magic 8-Ball, should we include a cause of action for nuisance in this complaint?”
Sometimes, if a case was particularly difficult, we would cross-reference the Magic 8-Ball with our horoscopes for that day (mine: Cancer, Jack’s: Scorpio). I can only assume that the head of the litigation department, who affectionately referred to Jack and me as his “Brain Trust,” did not know this little fact. Or maybe he didn’t really care, as long as we billed our Miss Cleo time to the appropriate client.
“Magic 8-Ball, will Brooke have a happy life?” he asked and then studied the ball carefully. Looking up at me, he said, “You can be certain.”
“Good,” I said.
“See, I told you this thing is good,” he said to me. “Magic 8-Ball, will Brooke have four children and move out to the suburbs?”
“That thing had better say no,” I said. “Why would you ask it that?”
“Not likely,” he reported. I breathed a sigh of relief and ran my hand theatrically across my forehead as if to say phew. Like how Bette Davis would have done it. If Bette Davis ever worked in a large Manhattan law firm and played with Magic 8-Balls, that is.
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