Cure for the Common Breakup

by Beth Kendrick

  “I’m not nervous.” She cleared her throat. “But our pact also specified fun, and this whole thing sounds like the opposite of fun.”

  “I promise you, we’ll have fun.” He took the lead as they started down the stairs. “I won’t bring you back until we do.”

  “You say that now, but I’m wearing lilac chiffon and you’re wearing a blue blazer. ‘Fun’ is going to be kind of a tall order.”

  He looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes gleaming. “I love a challenge.”

  —

  “I’m drinking water,” Summer pointed out during a five-second break between introductions to people whose names she forgot immediately. “I want full credit for my restraint.”

  “It’s called ‘cocktail hour’ for a reason,” Dutch said. He looked completely at ease in the country club ballroom, surrounded by crystal chandeliers and servers in black bow ties. The faint strains of jazz music played in the background, and though they’d rotated through countless conversation partners, the small talk was always the same. “Have a glass of wine. Have two. You’ll be glad you did, come speech time.”

  “No way. I’m on my best behavior, and wine doesn’t go with that. Trust and believe.”

  “It’s dinner, not purgatory. The goal is to have a little fun, remember?”

  Summer took another sip of water, trying to imagine it was vodka. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you—with me, there is no such thing as ‘a little’ fun.”

  “Well, then, let’s try to make it through dinner,” he murmured into her ear, “and then we’ll get out of here and go take off your . . . headband.”

  She stared at him, deliberating. “Are you being inappropriate?”

  Before he could reply, Mimi Sinclair swanned into the room, pausing in the doorway so everyone could take note. She was perfectly turned out in a black-and-white bouclé cocktail suit with sparkly buttons . . . and several inches of toilet paper trailing from the heel of one of her black pumps.

  Her dramatic entrance caused quite a stir—the amount of snickering and whispering would have been more suited to a middle school assembly than a room full of elected officials. But the terrorist in tweed was oblivious to the commotion. She sashayed toward Dutch, then stopped in her tracks when she noticed Summer by his side. “You’re here? With him?”

  “Kind of.” Summer grinned. “Unofficially.”

  “You look”—her icy gaze raked over Summer’s lavender dress—“different.”

  “Don’t I?” Summer squeezed Dutch’s hand and stepped away from him. “May I have a word?”

  Mimi sniffed. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “But I have something to say to you.”

  “If you’re trying to apologize for the scene you caused at the nail salon—”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not.” Summer put her arm around Mimi’s shoulder and steered her back to the ladies’ room. “We’ll be right back.”

  —

  “I am humiliated!” Mimi’s voice came out as a strangled little squeak as she sagged against the wall of the white wooden bathroom stall. “Positively mortified.”

  “Oh, relax. It’s no big deal.” Summer plucked the last bit of tissue off the socialite’s shoe. “Happens to everyone.”

  “But it didn’t happen to everyone—it happened to me. People were laughing at me. The lieutenant governor was laughing at me!”

  Summer’s forehead creased. “I don’t even know what that is. Is that a real job?”

  “Yes! An important job!” Mimi looked as anguished as her Botox would allow.

  “Well, I’m sure the lieutenant governor has walked around with toilet paper stuck to his shoe, too.” Summer appropriated Mimi’s handbag and started reapplying the traumatized woman’s powder. “I know I have. In fact, this exact thing happened to me at my dad’s Pulitzer Prize luncheon.”

  Mimi looked at Summer with new interest. “Your dad won a—”

  “That’s not the point of this story. The point is, I made people laugh with me instead of at me.” She winked. “Not to boast, but agents and publishers in New York still talk about that day. I’ve dined out for years on that story.”

  Mimi accepted the lipstick and hand mirror Summer offered. “What’d you do?”

  Summer shrugged one shoulder. “Since everyone was already talking about me, I figured I’d give them something worth talking about. So I went back to the restroom, bided my time, and waited until the speeches were about to start.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I gave my encore.” Summer crouched down and liberated a spare roll of toilet paper from the metal dispenser. “Here. You’ll need at least two more of these.”

  —

  Ten minutes later, in the lull after the band stopped playing while diners were taking their seats, Mimi traipsed back into the ballroom. She’d tucked the ends of three rolls of toilet paper into the waistband of her skirt. The rolls unfurled behind her like a two-ply bridal train.

  The crowd laughed. Mimi laughed. The lieutenant governor and his wife got up from their seats and went over to greet her. And after she’d schmoozed and simpered her way through all the VIPs, Mimi beamed at Summer and informed Dutch, “Chip and I will be writing you a check for your next campaign.”

  “Mrs. Sinclair likes you now?” Dutch turned to Summer, his voice lowered in awe.

  “Yeah. And bonus, now you can spring for the fancy, four-color campaign leaflets.” She toasted him with her water glass. “Enjoy.”

  “First Ingrid, now Mrs. Sinclair.” He kept staring at her. “How do you do it?”

  Summer smiled and straightened her headband. “I have my ways.”

  —

  As Dutch had predicted, Summer was regretting her water-only policy halfway through the speeches. She’d had better entrées and more comfortable seating on transatlantic flights. She’d heard more engaging oration on the talking-heads portion of Real Housewives of Orange County. But she kept herself in check with her ankles crossed, her hands folded, and her eyes on the podium.

  Then, after the servers cleared the dinner course, Dutch pulled a pen and a stack of business cards out of his suit jacket pocket, drew a tic-tac-toe grid on the back of a card, placed an “X” in the center of the grid, and slid the card over to Summer.

  “Your move,” he murmured as the audience broke into applause.

  “Game on, buddy, you’re digging your own grave.” Summer drew an “O” in the upper right corner.

  For the next hour, they played increasingly cutthroat rounds of tic-tac-toe, then moved on to hangman. And all night, she was acutely aware of her posture, her expression, and the headband pressing into her scalp. Though she felt like a fraud, she looked like a lady. And Dutch always looked thoughtful and engaged, even as he tried to provoke her with tic-tac-toe effrontery. She realized the two of them weren’t so different: They both spent their lives hiding their true feelings and putting up a good front in public.

  Halfway through dessert, he leaned over and murmured, “Are we having fun yet?”

  And she was stunned to realize that the answer was yes.

  chapter 17

  “Let the record show that I didn’t have a single drop of alcohol.” Summer sighed with relief as Dutch accepted his car keys from the valet at the end of the night. Her toes were numb from standing on carpet over concrete, her fingers felt grimy after countless handshakes, and her cheeks ached from forcing a smile while making inane chitchat.

  Basically, she felt the way she did after working nine hours in first-class. All she had to do now was collect newspapers and plastic cups and stow the little oblong pillows in the overhead bins.

  “You’re the picture of restraint.” Dutch opened the car door for her.

  “But let the record also show that I desperately wanted to play a political fund-raiser drinking
game where every time somebody said the words ‘progress,’ ‘future,’ or ‘leadership,’ I’d do a shot.” She slid into the passenger seat and kicked off her shoes.

  “Maybe next time.” He settled into the driver’s seat and pulled the car around the hedge-lined circular driveway.

  “And if I had played such a drinking game, I’d be in the emergency room with acute alcohol poisoning.”

  “Well, you’re off duty now, and you did great.” He reached over and patted her knee through two layers of chiffon.

  “So did you.” She inched the hem up a few inches to see if he’d try for skin-on-skin contact. “I can see why everyone votes for you.”

  “Not everyone,” he corrected, putting on the brakes as they waited for the long line of cars in front of them to turn left.

  “Don’t be modest. My sources tell me that you won the last election by a landslide. Like, ninety-nine point nine percent.”

  He laughed. “With Hattie Huntington being the very vocal dissenter.”

  “Let’s not talk about Hattie Huntington right now.” Summer made a face. “In fact, let’s not ever talk about Hattie Huntington.”

  “We’ll add that to our pact.” He settled his hand back on her bare knee. She responded by reaching over and loosening the knot of his silk tie.

  He upped the ante by edging out of the line of cars, executing a U-turn over the country club lawn, and pulling into the dimly lit parking lot by the service entrance.

  Summer’s jaw dropped as he reached across her to unbuckle her seat belt. “Oh my God, you left tire tracks on the grass.”

  “I guess we both have problems driving while we’re distracted.” He caught her hand in his and brushed a kiss over her knuckles.

  “You rebel, you.” Summer continued to work on his tie with her free hand. Once she’d undone the knot, she grabbed both ends of the tie and tugged him closer. “Admit it: You have a fetish for tea-length skirts. Lavender to you is like a red flag to a bull. You have problems.”

  “I have problems?” He hauled her up and settled her into his lap. “You can’t control yourself around cuff links and two-button blazers.”

  “It’s true.” She leaned down and licked his bottom lip. “I had no idea an oxford shirt could be so clean and so dirty at the same time.”

  He brushed her bangs back and yanked off the sparkly headband.

  “That feels so good.” Summer threw her head back and shook out her hair like a shampoo commercial. “I’m pretty sure I—yep, I just came.”

  He laughed and cupped her cheek for a moment, then ran his hands along her bare feet, her ankles, her calves, her—

  They both startled as a blinding beam of light appeared on the other side of the driver’s window.

  “Police. Step out of the car, please.”

  Summer clapped her hands over her mouth. Dutch gripped the steering wheel for a second, swore under his breath, then rolled down the window.

  “Hi, Sean.” He raised his palm in greeting. “It’s me.”

  The baby-faced sheriff’s deputy dropped his flashlight, picked it up, and dropped it again. “Oh, hey, Dutch. I mean, Mayor Jansen. I mean . . .” He backed away from the car, tripping over his own feet.

  “We were just leaving.” Dutch rolled the window back up and started the car. He turned to Summer with a rueful expression. “Everyone is going to hear about this. The sheriff’s department gossips more than a quilting bee.”

  She tossed her headband into the backseat and reiterated her words of wisdom from earlier that evening. “Well, if everybody’s going to be talking, we might as well give them something worth talking about. Let’s go parking by the boardwalk.”

  —

  Summer arrived at Hollis’s bookstore early Monday morning with a spring in her step and a box full of doughnuts from the Eat Your Heart Out bakery.

  Beryl and Hollis were lying in wait with a French press full of coffee and the latest edition of the town newspaper.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the star of the Black Dog Bay Bulletin’s police blotter.”

  Summer dodged Snidely Whiplash’s attempt at assault and placed the pastry next to the cash register. “What are you talking about?”

  Hollis rolled her eyes at Beryl. “Look at her, acting all wide-eyed and innocent.”

  “I think we know who this little item is referring to.” Beryl pointed out a block of text on the newspaper’s back page:

  Saturday, 8:41 a.m.: A caller on Oceanside Drive reported a possible theft after she was unable to locate her grocery list.

  Saturday, 6:35 p.m.: A caller on Bayshore Crescent reported that a pair of “belligerent seagulls” were trespassing on her second-story balcony, refusing to let the caller’s husband use the barbecue.

  Saturday, 10:27 p.m.: Adult male and female engaged in amorous activities in a parked vehicle in the Gull Points Country Club parking lot were issued a warning by the sheriff’s department.

  Summer scanned the newspaper, then read it again. “Holy shit. Someone seriously called the police because she couldn’t find her shopping list?”

  “Oh, that’s probably Mrs. Ledbetter,” Beryl said. “She needs a lot of attention.”

  Hollis nodded. “Last month, she called the sheriff because she couldn’t get the price she wanted at a garage sale.”

  “But there you lovebirds are.” Beryl tapped the page. “Right next to the gangster seagulls. I see the lilac chiffon worked its magic.”

  “Making out in a car at the country club? Hot,” Hollis decreed. “Put down the doughnut and tell us everything!”

  “Well.” Summer dabbed a sprinkling of powdered sugar off her lip. “We did get a little carried away.”

  Hollis and Beryl nudged each other and giggled. “And when you say ‘carried away,’ you mean . . . ?”

  “He took off my headband . . . and I loved it.”

  “Oooooh!” They all laughed.

  “And then?” Beryl pressed.

  “And then the police shut us down and blabbed to the media, apparently. Political scandal!”

  “Are you guys going out again?” Hollis demanded.

  Summer was saved from having to answer this by Hattie Huntington, who tapped her huge cocktail ring against the bookstore’s plate glass window and beckoned her paid companion out to the sidewalk.

  “She is such a piece of work,” Beryl muttered.

  “Here.” Hollis pressed a paperback titled Coping with Difficult People into Summer’s hands. “You’ll be needing this.”

  Summer marched outside and greeted her employer with a snappy salute.

  Hattie was not amused. “What time will you be moving in today?”

  “Oh, right, I guess it’s Monday. I don’t know. A few hours?”

  Hattie glanced at the book in Summer’s hands. “I’ll expect you at noon sharp.”

  Summer squinted in the sunlight glinting off the ocean waves. “You know, I don’t seem to recall signing any sort of contract or employment agreement.”

  “Noon, Miss Benson.”

  This time, Summer responded with a curtsy. “As you wish.” She straightened up. “Is that better, Your Highness?”

  Hattie inclined her head. “Inestimably so.”

  Summer spotted Ingrid walking out of Rebound Salon, so she flashed Miss Huntington the peace sign and hurried across the street.

  “Looking good!” She fell into step beside the teenager, noting that Ingrid had reverted to her usual baggy jeans and reddish brown hair.

  “Thanks.” Ingrid ducked her head to hide her face. “I had to go in twice for restorative color. Cori called in a master stylist from Baltimore to help.” She hugged herself with both arms. “I just forked over a month’s pay.”

  “And it was worth every penny.” Summer steered her toward the bronze dog statue in the t
own square. “Blond washes you out. Now you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Ingrid shot an envious look at Summer’s platinum layers. “Some of us are doomed to boring brown hair.”

  “Boring is an attitude, not a hair color,” Summer informed her. “Which reminds me, I did promise to take you shopping, so let me know when you’re ready.”

  “I’m going to need more than new clothes to get Maxwell to notice me.” Ingrid plopped down on the gazebo steps with a sigh. “I need, like, a new personality and massive amounts of plastic surgery.”

  Summer sat down next to her. “I’ll only ask this once: Are you sure this dude is worth it?”

  “I dyed my hair gray. What do you think?”

  “I think that, if nothing else, shopping will cheer you up. Rumor has it there’s an outlet mall in Rehoboth Beach.”

  “Can’t.” Ingrid heaved a world-weary sigh. “I just spent all my fun money on restorative color.”

  “I thought you had all these jobs. Teaching swim lessons, babysitting, whatever. And you clearly don’t spend anything on gas, car insurance, or cute outfits. How do you have no money?”

  “Oh, I have money,” Ingrid said. “But I invest most of it.”

  “You invest it?”

  “Yeah.” Ingrid scratched a mosquito bite on her elbow. “Municipal bonds and index funds. High-interest CDs. Nothing crazy.”

  Summer narrowed her eyes. “How old are you?”

  “Old enough to know that money is better off compounding interest in the market than wasted on some overpriced tank top.”

  “Really. Says who?”

  “Dutch.”

  “Of course. I should have known. This is crazy. This is like an episode of Scooby-Doo.” Summer tugged at a lock of Ingrid’s restored russet hair. “Take off your mask. Admit you’re a sixty-five-year-old tycoon.”

  Ingrid laughed. “I’m just practical, okay? I like to plan ahead and think about the future.”

  Summer shook her head. “Then we really have no business being friends.”

  “Oh, we’re not friends,” Ingrid said with the same sense of authority that Dutch often displayed. “You’re my mentor.”