Better Off Without Him (Romantic Comedy)

by Dee Ernst

“I belong to a coven, of course, although I like to think of it as my family. But my support group is different. It’s where I go to bitch and moan.”

  “Just like regular therapy?” I was intrigued.

  “Almost. We also spend a lot of time talking about the rabid misconceptions and bizarre expectations of those outside the circle.”

  “Well,” I said brightly, “that sounds like fun. Do what you can, Rebecca. I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Hang tough, Mona. I love you.”

  “I love you too.” I hung up and gazed wistfully at the phone. I love Brian’s family. Except MarshaTheBitch, of course. How did he end up being such a shit?

  “How did Brian end up being such a shit?” I asked aloud, to the world at large. Anthony shook his head. “Don’t know, babycakes, but it’s really time to call Oprah.”

  He was right. I needed to talk to my agent. It was time.

  Once I had decided to change the focus of the book, everything became surprisingly easy. I had spent the past few days writing in spurts of amazing speed and, more importantly, clarity. I knew exactly who was who and where the story was going. But I was nervous about talking to Sylvia. The manuscript was due on June first. My publisher had given me a very nice advance. I was worried about finishing the book on time, because in between those moments of speed and clarity, I sat around a lot, almost in tears, feeling sorry for myself. It was hard, I was discovering, to be creative and miserable at the same time. I had never needed extra time to finish a manuscript, and under normal circumstances I might have easily gotten one. But these were not normal circumstances. The book I was writing was not the book I had been paid for, and that could be sticky.

  Sylvia picked up on the second ring and, having caller ID, cut right to the chase. “Mona, you’ve been avoiding me. What’s wrong with the book? Is it going to be finished on time?” she asked, putting first things first as always.

  “No. Things have happened. I’ve made some changes.”

  I could hear her settle in for a much longer conversation than she originally anticipated. “Okay. What changes?”

  Anthony had refilled my coffee cup, knowing this would take a while, and, unlike some people, I am not a pacer when I talk on the phone. I like to sit in one comfortable spot for the duration. “Well, first is the title. It’s no longer going to be called So Many Men, So Little Time. The new title is Better Off Without Him.”

  “Uh-huh. That does indicate a lot of changes,” Sylvia said slowly.

  “Yes. Sydney Karloff no longer has her own graphic design company, she’s a children’s book writer and illustrator. She’s not twenty-seven either. She’s forty-five. Her husband still leaves her, but they’d been married twenty years, not just one. And she doesn’t have a walk-up in SoHo. She moves from her Upper West Side co-op to a small town in rural New York.”

  Sylvia was silent. “So I guess this eliminates the sexy undercover cop working on a major heroin bust.”

  “Pretty much. Jack is now a high school science teacher who paints houses in the summer. She hires him to paint her new house.”

  “Uh-huh. What about the millionaire who wants a new logo for his charitable foundation to help underprivileged kids?”

  “Brock? Now he’s a fifty-year-old bank president and volunteer at the local youth center.”

  “And the ex-husband? Does he come back begging for forgiveness?”

  “No. That never happens in real life. Even in romance novels, it’s a cliché. He’s a schmuck and he’s out of the picture by page thirteen.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay, so who does she end up with?”

  “No one. That is, it’s vague. Could be either guy. It ends when she realizes that her life alone is more important and meaningful than her marriage ever was, and her friends and family mean more than some man.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But she still has lots of sex and there’s a happy ending.”

  Sylvia was silent. I closed my eyes and tried to hear what she was doing on the other end of the line, but there was dead silence. Finally, she said, “This is a significantly different book that the one you proposed last fall.”

  “I know.”

  “And it is significantly different than the one you’d received a very substantial advance for.”

  “I know, Sylvia. But it’s good. Really good. Better than anything I’ve ever written.”

  “When we discussed you writing something other than historical romance, this was not like anything you mentioned.”

  I was feeling a little desperate. “I know, Sylvia. But this is a good book. I’ve got the first fifty pages, and they are amazing. Talk to Frannie. Please.” Frannie was Francine Welles, editor extraordinaire who had been holding my hand for over ten years.

  “Okay. I’ll try calling her right now, and I’ll call you back.”

  I clicked off the phone and looked over at Anthony. He’s been with me long enough to know the consequences of making major changes to a book you’d already been paid for. He smiled at me.

  “Mona, this really is the best work you’ve ever done. I love the way you write, you know that, but this is really something special. Your characters are real and honest and funny. I laughed out loud at some of this stuff. And I’m in love with Sydney. If I were an old straight guy, I’d be all over her.”

  “Oh, Anthony, thank you. Your opinion really matters to me, you know that. I love Sydney, too. I want her to be strong and happy. She deserves it.”

  He leaned across the couch and kissed me on the cheek. “So do you, babycakes. So do you.” He looked thoughtful. “Maybe you could convene the Mavens?”

  Ah, the Mavens. Let me explain. As a romance writer, I’m a member of the Romance Writers of America, a group of people, mostly women, who support and encourage the romance-writing industry. And believe me, it’s an industry. Romance is really big bucks. We all meet once a year to congratulate each other, give awards, eat lots of good food and network like crazy. Considering we’re all technically competitors, we get along very well and are generally supportive of each other’s efforts.

  Over the years I’d become friendly with a group of writers who all happen to live in the New York metropolitan area. We’re all members of our local RWA chapters.

  Anthony refers to us as ‘the Mavens’ because between us, we’ve written every type of romance novel known to Publisher’s Weekly. We’re experts. We’re popular with fans. We’re financially successful. And we love to get together to have a long lunch, exchange ideas, and, as Anthony says, shovel deep shit.

  “Good idea,” I said. Talking about the new book with those women would give me serious feedback. “Actually, it’s a great idea. Send an e-mail to all of them and see if we can get a date.”

  Sylvia called back less than an hour later. “Fran is concerned. She wants a complete synopsis and whatever you’ve got written. She wasn’t happy.”

  “With what?”

  “Well, for one thing, there’s no happily ever after with Mr. Perfect.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sylvia. This book is about a woman who does not need a man to feel complete and valuable. She is happy with her life as a single person. How can that be a problem?”

  “Listen, Mona, I think it’s great. In fact, even as we speak, therapists and feminists all over the country are giving you a standing ovation. But we’re talking about book editors here, Mona. You know how they think.”

  I sighed. Yes, I did know how they thought. “Anything else?”

  “Forty-five is a tough age to sell. Can she be younger?”

  “No, she can’t. What’s wrong with forty-five? Not every woman who reads a book is twenty-three.”

  “I know that. But there’s marketing to deal with, and forty-five is a hard sell.”

  “What happens to all the forty-year-old marketing people? Are they all sent to the large print division, or just given a walker and shown the door?”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger, honey. I’m just saying.”


  “I’m sorry. Listen, I’ll deal with Frannie. I’ll send her the stuff right away, and I’ll convince her. I have faith.”

  “Okay, Mona. Then I’ll have faith too.”

  Chapter Six

  My daughters and I have been going down to the Jersey shore for the summer since the twins were in still diapers. We go down to Long Beach Island, a long sliver of sand dotted with tiny towns and miles of beach and homes that have become so overpriced it’s like the Hamptons but without the pomp and circumstance. Going down there year after year has resulted in a number of summer-only friendships for the girls and myself, so the house is always noisy and happy and crowded. I love the long mornings with coffee on the porch, listening to the sound of the ocean. I love grilling fish and making salad and dicing fruit and pretending I’m being healthy. Fred loves romping on the beach every night, chasing seagulls, and being walked everywhere we need to go. The girls love sleeping late, Froot Loops for breakfast, trolling on the beach, and wearing as little clothing as possible. They also love the Keegan boys.

  The Keegan boys are now seventeen, sixteen and fourteen. They are all tall and very good-looking. I’ve always assumed they took after their mother, although I never met her. Doug and his ex-wife parted right after the youngest, Mike, was born. Doug apparently made a boatload of money designing a very popular video game, and when he sold his tiny company to Sony, the ex-wife imagined a lifestyle quite different than what Doug imagined. So she took half the loot and did the Paris-London-New York thing. Doug stayed in Pennsylvania. His one concession to wealth was a house on the Jersey shore where his boys stay with him for the summer. He and the boys arrived three years after we did, and the kids grew up together.

  Doug is the ugliest sexy man I know. Or maybe the sexiest ugly man. I’m not sure which comes first – the ugly part or the sexy part. He’s short – no more than 5’6” with a wedge-shaped head, high forehead, small, close-set eyes and very high cheekbones. All in all, a fairly hideous package, except for his mouth. May I, just for a moment, wax rhapsodic about Doug’s mouth?

  His lips are wide and full, a bit too wide, some may argue, but wide enough that the ends are turned up in a quirky, slightly naughty smile. His lips are also full, Botox full, but they’ve been like that since before Botox was a twinkle in some plastic surgeon’s eye. His lips are also red, and smooth, and very soft looking. And moist. They always look like he just licked a little something off his lips.

  He’s also very sexy. His body is amazing – he spends all his time playing with his sons. They ride bikes every morning to the community pool where Doug does a bunch of laps while the boys score with the cute female lifeguards. They rollerblade, shoot hoops, throw Frisbees, windsurf, and bodysurf. As a result, Doug has a broad chest, muscular arms, washboard abs and an ass that’s tight as a drum. All the man has ever worn are shorts and half-buttoned Hawaiian shirts. The kind Magnum PI wore.

  Doug also has great hair – thick and curly, a little too long, a beautiful chestnut color barely shot through with gray.

  But the sexiest thing about Doug Keegan is that he makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the room. He looks right at you, talks right to you, listens to every word and laughs in all the right places. Consequently, he always has a string of very attractive, usually much younger and always intelligent and successful women who hang around him like bees around a hive.

  Doug started another business and made another bunch of money on another video game. During the summer, he leaves his company to spend time with his sons, where, on rainy days when they can’t be outside doing healthy things, they stay inside and test all of the new games Doug is developing on any one of four or five different game systems Doug has scattered around his house.

  I once had a brief flurry of worry that the two families would suffer a summer romance that would ruin the carefully built and very successful friendships we’d established. But the girls talk about the boys like brothers, and the three boys always seem to have other girlfriends to keep them busy.

  Every summer, it’s the same routine. We leave early in the morning, stop at Costco and spend a half the summer’s food budget on steak, fish and junk food, get to the shore house by 1 p.m., have lunch, and spend a few hours cleaning and opening windows. By late afternoon, my daughters take Fred for the first of many long walks around the neighborhood as they wait for the Keegan clan to return from whatever activity they’re engaged in. Then, the girls pile over to the Keegan house, Fred drags his hot and tired butt up onto our tiny, shaded side porch, and Doug comes over to welcome me back to the shore.

  This year, just like clockwork, he yelled hello from the front door and came into the kitchen, just as I was finishing stowing away all the freezer food. Doug never seemed to realize that we had not seen each other for nine months. Or perhaps it just didn’t matter to him.

  “I have discovered,” he announced, “the perfect use for all that mint we planted a few years ago. The Mojito. You smash together lots of fresh mint with sugar and lime, then add white rum. Top with seltzer. It will make our summer perfect.”

  “It sounds wonderful. Can we make it by the gallon?”

  “Sure.” He rooted around in a cardboard box, pulled out Doritos and opened the bag. “So, the girls tell me you finally got rid of that asshole husband of yours.”

  I stared at him. “Doug, I thought you liked Brian. I thought you two were, well, friends.”

  He crammed a few chips into his mouth. “Hey, I love Brian,” he said after a few chews. “Brian is the perfect friend. Funny, knows sports, good drinker, a great talker. But let’s face it, Mona, as a husband, he must have really sucked.”

  I nodded and cleared my throat. “Doug, all I’ve heard for the past two months is what a shitty husband Brian was. Why didn’t anybody tell me? Why didn’t you?”

  He wiped Dorito schmutz off his chin. “Come on, Mona, what was I going to say? Hey, I think your husband is a great guy, but he’s treating you like pond-scum? What would your reaction to that be?” He settled his still-admirable butt against the counter. “You’d deny it, yell at me, call me jealous or something equally ridiculous, and we wouldn’t be friends anymore.” He shrugged. “I just figured you were smart enough to figure it out yourself, eventually.”

  I munched a Dorito. I had just stashed eighty dollars worth of swordfish steaks into the freezer, so I could start the healthy eating thing later. “But, Doug, that’s the thing. I didn’t figure it out. Didn’t the girls tell you? He left me. For another woman. Younger, skinnier, blonder. French.”

  “Hmmm. French, uh?” His eyes narrowed, and as they’re pretty small to begin with, they practically closed. “He’s such a moron. He mentioned her.”

  “Mentioned her?” My voice rose three or four octaves. Fred, out on the porch, lifted his head and actually whimpered. “He mentioned her? When? What did he mention?”

  Doug looked apologetic. “Last summer when he was here. We were drunk, of course, and he told me there was a French woman that he was, well, infatuated with. I told him he was a fool. I told him to stop before it was too late. That he couldn’t risk losing you.” Doug shrugged. “Moron.”

  “You didn’t tell me,” I yelled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Doug sighed patiently. “Would you have believed me? No. You would have thought I was jealous and all that other crap and, bingo, not friends.” He shrugged. “I thought he’d outgrow her, just like he outgrew all the others.”

  I froze. “Others?”

  Doug sighed again. “Oh, shit. Now I’m the moron.”

  “How many others?” I asked carefully.

  He tried to look nonchalant. “Oh, three or four. Maybe six. Usually he met them on business trips, and they lasted just a few weeks. Seven. No more than ten.” He swallowed. “Ten.”

  I tried to think. “Doug, we’ve known you for ten years. That means that every summer that Brian came down here, he told you about a new one?”

  “No, no,
Mona. That’s not how it was at all.” He thrust the bag of chips in my face. “Have another Dorito.”

  I munched rebelliously. “Okay, then, how was it?”

  “It’s only been in the past, oh, five years. He just started talking one night how he had gone to New Orleans for something and met a woman, and he said –“

  “Said what?”

  Doug took me gently by the arm. “Let’s sit outside,” he suggested.

  My house is a converted Cape, the whole first floor a combination living-dining-kitchen with a bathroom and my bedroom tucked into the back. I have a tiny side porch off the kitchen, but the whole back of the house is a screened-in porch with comfy wicker furniture, ceiling fans and white Christmas lights. It’s where we spend most of our time. That’s where Doug and I sat as he told me all about the Great Adventures of Brian Berman and his Marvelous Wandering Penis.

  Doug is a great story-teller. He’s bright, very articulate and has a terrific sense of humor. If he hadn’t been relating my own husband’s infidelities, it would have been a very entertaining visit. As it was, I sat there and started feeling angry all over again, angrier than I had for been for, say, sixty-seven days. Ever since Brian walked out of the house.

  “Mona, I’m sorry,” Doug said at last. “I’m sorry Brian was such a prick. I’m sorry I had to keep this from you because I’ve always considered you a much better friend than Brian. And I’m really sorry that I told you all this. But I think that you needed to know, because Brian is going to want you back. I don’t care how hot or skinny or blonde this one is, she’s nothing compared to you, and even a jerk like Brian will figure that out. You need to know so that when he comes crawling back, you can tell him no.”

  “He’s not coming back,” I said dully. “Didn’t the girls tell you? He’s happy as a pig in shit. Dominique has him puttering around the house singing. He even cooks when the girls visit him for the weekend. He never cooked a day in his life with me. He never did any of the things for me that he does with Dominique – the ballet, chick flicks, God, he even walks her dog.”