Shari j. Ryan
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Early Praise for Man Flu
About Shari J. Ryan
Also by Shari J. Ryan
Acknowledgments
Because of you…
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Early Praise for Man Flu
This is my first book by Shari. And I can absolutely guarantee you it will not be my last. This book has it all, it has EVERYTHING!!
Ashley Gayhart, Early Reader
OMG! I loved Man Flu. This book is sweet, sexy and hilarious. I haven't read a book that had me laughing so much and the hot sexy tension between Logan and Hannah. I loved reading the journey of Logan and Hannah story and meeting other characters along the way. I love reading Shari Ryan books. Never disappointed and her books always take me to a happy place.
Belinda Visser, Early Reader
Man Flu by Shari Ryan is one of the best books I've had the pleasure of reading this year. Cover to cover Ryan causes readers to relate, hope and laugh!
Emily Goodwin, Southern Vixens Book Obsession
Do you want funny? Do you want sexy? Do you want sweet? Do you want it all? Look no further!! You’ve found it right here!!! Hannah and Logan, just *sigh* - First of all, I believe Ms. Ryan’s take on the “man flu” is hilarious and one hundred percent accurate!!! You’ll be laughing until you almost pee yourself!!
Katie Reister, Early Reader
I was laughing so hard from beginning to end. I loved everything about this story. Poor Hannah's life as a single mother seems to be just one mishap after another.
Nora Fresse, Early Reader
About Shari J. Ryan
Shari J. Ryan is an International Bestselling Author of heartbreakers and mind-benders. Shari was once told she tends to exaggerate often and sometimes talks too much, which would make a great foundation for fictional books. Four years later, Shari has written eleven novels that often leave readers in tears, either from laughing, or crying.
With her loud Boston girl attitude, Shari isn’t shy about her love for writing or the publishing industry. Along with writing several International Bestsellers, Shari splits her time between writing and her longstanding passion for graphic design. In 2014, she started an indie-publishing resource company, MadHat Books, to help fellow authors with their book cover designs, as well as providing assistance with the self-publishing process.
While Shari may not find many hours to sleep, she still manages to make time for her family. She is a devoted wife to a great guy, and a mother to two little boys who remind her daily why she was put on this earth.
Make sure you join Shari’s Twisted Drifters Reader Group at: http://bit.ly/2e17FsX
Also by Shari J. Ryan
Last Words
Manservant
Raine’s Haven
Spiked Lemonade
Queen of the Throne
A Heart of Time
A Missing Heart
A Change of Heart
No Way Out
Ravel
House of Tinder
TAG
The Schasm Series
Copyright © 2018 by Shari J. Ryan
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1983774942
ISBN-10: 1983774944
To Gia and Annelle.
Friends like you are hard to come by, and I’m not sure what I’d do without you. When I need a laugh, you’re there with the perfect material. Thank you for inspiring me to be the goof I’ve always been. Love you, ladies!
Acknowledgments
I’m incredibly grateful for the support, love, and help I receive every day. It seems like I have an abundance of that in my life, and that makes me lucky.
Lisa, thank you for your constant honesty and realness. I know I can always, always, always depend on you, and that means the world to me, always. (See what I did there …)
Linda, my rock, who I hate going a day without talking to. Not only do you provide the best platform for me to thrive on, you’re an amazing friend to me too. I couldn’t think of a better person to walk next to throughout the publishing process.
Julie, Julie, Julie, there aren’t enough words in the dictionary to tell you how much I love and cherish you and our friendship. Thank you so much for everything you do every day, and for picking up my pieces when I break down.
My beta ladies, I’m so grateful for our private chat sessions and your honesty. Our jokes and laughs keep me going every day, and it means the world to me that you’ve all stuck by my side for so long. You haven’t gotten sick of me yet, and I’m very grateful for each one of you! xoxox
Twisted Drifters, bloggers, readers, and co-authors, you make this industry—this “job” the best one out there. I love what I do because of you. Thank you for loving me enough to read what’s inside of my crazy head.
To my family: You have been so supportive of my journey, and I’m forever grateful.
My boys—Bryce and Brayden—never let your future spouses know the truth about the man flu. You are strong little boys, and you can power through anything you put your mind to … even the sniffles.
Because of you…
Josh, oh Josh. My man, who currently has the flu. Ironic, right? I love you so much for acting out some of the scenes in this book so I could write such an accurate portrayal. You make the man flu look as easy as childbirth, and I respect the hell out of that.
If only this book were about you… Just kidding.
Thank you for being my passenger on this crazy little trip. If I didn’t have you as a partner to laugh with, I’d just look crazy laughing all alone. I love you more than anything, and I hope you feel better by time this book releases. xoxo
Prologue
One Year Ago
“I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU OFFICIALLY divorced,” I say while staring at the bathroom mirror. “You may kiss your reflection, since that’s the only person you know you can trust, and live happily ever after with.” That’s all I have for a self-help pep talk on this lovely occasion today. No one else knows about the divorce, so I can’t even go celebrate or anything. Time to buy a new vibrator, I guess.
In any case, I’ve kept this to myself because if anyone were to ask Rick about the split, he’d inform them I was 50 percent at fault because I wasn’t as horny as the twenty-five-year-old he found on Tinder. When I start sharing the news with mutual friends or our extended families, Rick’s story will come out, and I don’t want anyone to know how often I avoided sex with my sleazeball husband. He thought his porn addiction should be a turn o
n, but it wasn’t my thing. The different scents of perfumes he would come home smelling like didn’t help either. I had no idea who else he was sleeping with, but I assumed it was a common occurrence.
Before Rick tried to explain his side of the story—how his infidelity and ensuing divorce were partially my fault, I wanted to put an announcement in the newspaper, so everyone knew not to address me as “Mrs.” or wonder why I have a big white indent on my left ring finger. It would be like a wedding announcement, but the opposite.
I was about to get to it, but then I remembered that announcements are typically written in third person to make it sound like someone cares enough about them to make a formal statement in the name of love. Come on, no one cares that much. If I remember correctly, I wrote ours, and it was something like: “Congratulations to Rick and Hannah Pierce on their recent nuptials. May they be happy and in love for all their days together.” So, because I was lame enough to write my own announcement back then, now I have to undo it and say (as if I’m someone else talking for me, of course): “Condolences and congratulations to Rick and Hannah Pierce on the event of their divorce. After ten long years of bliss, or hell together, depending on which one of the couple you’re talking to, Rick was caught cheating on Hannah. Since there are always two sides to every story, we wish the newly divorced couple the best of luck being single, lonely, and washed up, and eventually wrinkled, forever. Unless you’re Rick, of course, since he’s already moved the hell on.”
Since I decided against the divorce announcement in the newspaper, I feel like I’ve come a long way, maturity wise. Instead of a public mortification, I opted to drop a laxative in Rick’s coffee this morning, hand him his last box of crap, and tell him to get out of my life, and my house too … I won that part. Then again, we’re talking about a habitable box filled with ten years of memories—memories that should all be burned inside of a flaming bag of shit and left on the doorstep of wherever he ends up.
I’m not bitter. I’m thrilled to start my life over at thirty-two with a toddler in tow. There are going to be men knocking my door down once the word gets out that I’m single. Although, it’ll probably just be the police because hopefully, someone will realize I haven’t been seen in months. Other than that, I’ve got this all figured out. I’ll quit my job, learn how to homeschool when it’s time, order all household items and groceries from Amazon, and request that their new drone thing drop off my deliveries so I don’t have to see anyone. If I request that my goods are delivered to the back porch, I won’t even have to open the front door. The best part is, I can eat like shit, wear yoga pants but never work out, and avoid all human contact with friends who want to gush about their amazing marriages and how hungry their sexual appetite is after so many happy years.
My therapist said that the first day of divorced life will be the worst. Well, I think I’ve already made some great strides toward my new future today.
Shoot, I forgot to add something to my list of things that need to be thrown out. My phone. It’s a part of the cleansing portion of starting over. The damn phone is blaring N’sync’s “Bye Bye Bye,” and I wish whoever is calling could hear the ringtone instead of me.
I answer because I need to adult, even though I’m on my way to not adulting anymore. “This is Hannah,” I answer.
“Hannah, it’s Alan. I just wanted to make sure you’re going to be rejoining us tomorrow? I realize you are finalizing your divorce today, but there are some pressing issues we need to go over if you can make yourself available.”
Alan Mole is the wonderful CEO of the company that employs me. He’s the one who cuts the checks for my salary, the one used to calculate my percentage of earned alimony and child support, so I’m screwed if I leave my job. At least it’s me getting screwed this time and not some twenty-five-year-old chick, but this does put a kink in my great plan. “Yeah, Alan, I’ll be there with bells on tomorrow.” I hang up and switch to the Words With Friends app, waiting for the next victim to experience my nasty wrath of rude words. It’s what I consider to be therapy, so I suppose throwing my phone out wouldn’t be the best idea, after all.
Dickle15 would like to challenge you to a game. Do you accept?
Dickle? Sure, why not? How do people come up with these horrible usernames, or find me, for that matter? Maybe I should have been more creative than HannahP84.
Dickle starts the game with the word, shatter. Nothing like starting a game with a seven-letter word. It’s on, Dickle. It’s on. You picked the wrong player this time.
I continue the game with the only word I have to play at the moment. Ironically, it’s the word heart, and so begins another funny episode of “Karma’s Picking on Hannah.”
This will all get easier.
It will get better.
Whatever goes down, must come back up.
Oh, and karma will eventually figure out its got the wrong person, Rick. Just wait.
Chapter One
Monday Morning. Need I say more?
365 Days Post Divorce
AS A LITTLE GIRL, I was told to study hard, get good grades, go to college, get a decent job, find a nice man, and have a family. My dad told me it would make for the perfect life, and I would be set up for success.
Like a good daughter, I listened. I did everything he said to do, but there were some things he forgot to mention, like the moments that grow in between those life goals and then sprout into the form of ugly weeds—the ones that don’t tear out of the ground without some plant killer. Except plant killer won’t work on an ex-husband, or would it …?
“Good morning, boss-lady,” Brielle sings as she follows me down the row of cubicles and into my office.
My office. Alan, the old-fashioned kind of businessman, and my company’s CEO, shockingly offered me a promotion to the Director of Marketing position earlier this year after I laboriously trudged through the Manager title, levels one through five, even though there are only supposed to be three levels. In any case, it made me feel like I could check off the box next to “successful career.”
“Good morning, Brielle, how was your weekend?” I sometimes live vicariously through Brielle’s weekends because she’s in her mid-twenties and living it up. She has very different goals in life, which makes me wonder if my dad might have been wrong about the certain path that would lead me to success and happiness.
Ever since I got my first Cosmo magazine in the mail when I was fifteen, I’ve had a thing for the publishing industry and dreamt of snagging a job in New York City, working for one of the big, women’s magazines. I imagined a tall, glass building and lots of high-class people walking around all day. I might have watched too many movies in the nineties and got my hopes up too high because some of the choices I made in my twenties got in the way of my dream. I couldn’t give it up completely, though, so I settled for a smaller magazine here in the suburbs of Massachusetts. I mean, I’ve got my own office, so it’s something.
It’s also pink, like baby-girl pink. It was a joke—a high five by a couple of my male co-workers, for being upgraded to an office. I love jokes … if they’re executed properly. However, I’ve been finding it difficult to work for a woman’s magazine while being one of only two women in my department.
“My weekend was fab. First, on Friday night, Adam and I went to Via and met up with some friends. We totally closed down three different bars that night. I don’t even know how it was possible, but clearly, it was.” She sweeps her hair to the side, and I can’t help but watch as each strand falls perfectly back into place. “I was wiped out on Saturday, so I slept until abouuuuut, I don’t know … elevenish? I got manis and pedis with the girls, then had lunch with my old college roomie.” She takes a breather because she’s been talking for a minute straight, but I know she isn’t done. “You know, it’s seriously getting dark out way too early. I can’t deal. Anyway, Adam and I hit up Boston for the night and spent the night at a mod hotel, which was super chic. You should totally check it out sometime. We went t
o bed wicked early for some reason,” she said with a wink, “but I just couldn’t make it past three that night. I must be starting to break down in age. Gosh, I don’t know how you function in your thirties.” I’ve learned to ignore Brielle’s lack of a filter. It’s great for honesty, no so much for modesty.
“Wow, that sounds like a busy weekend,” I tell her. “Are things better with Adam, now?” Her six-month relationship has been on the rocks, and I guess this weekend was supposed to be a make-it-or-break-it situation.
“Eh, we didn’t really have a chance to talk too much.” I’d ask how that’s possible, but I know how it’s possible. I just really don’t care to hear it. I preferred other activities besides talking at one time … back when.
“Understandable,” I tell her.
“Sunday was pretty much just a lot of ‘non-talking,’ if you know what I mean.” She winks and jiggles her eyebrows.
I got it. You have more sex than a red-light district, and I’m dried up like a prune. I hope that state of being isn’t a permanent feature, like the whole saying: If you don’t use it, you lose it.
“I got what you’re putting out there,” I tell her with a mom-ish wink. “I’m glad you had a good weekend.”
“No problemo,” she chirps while scanning through her phone. “So, you have a ten o’clock appointment with the new temp, a three o’clock sales meeting, and a date with Dickle at seven.” She covers her mouth and pulls in a sharp breath before continuing. “I can be at your house by six-thirty to take care of Cora if you want?”
Brielle is my spirit animal, and I think I might love her, but— “Cancel my date. I’m not ready to meet Dickle anymore.”
“Oh?” she questions in her high-pitched I need to know more tone. “What happened to your bet? I thought you kind of had a thing for him … and his Dickle?” she snorts. It’s been a year of talking to this guy, and she still can’t say his name without laughing.
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