Fly Me to the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

because I know that will take a lot longer than a weekend. What I’m suggesting is forty-eight hours of hard mourning, not counting what you already started last night, and then we’re just gonna clean it all up and not look back.”
    “I don’t know,” I said, tearing up again.
    “I know you think it sounds impossible, but you can do it. Now hand me that DVD,” he said, sliding it in and pushing PLAY.

 
     
     
     
    After one and a half viewings of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
two bottles of duty-free vodka, three limes, one bottle of Dom Perignon (I hoped Kat wouldn’t mind), two pints of Ben and Jerry’s (Chunky Monkey for Clay, Cherry Garcia for me), five Styrofoam containers of take-out Thai food, one thoroughly chewed on but never lit cigar, one bottle of nearly knocked over but quickly recovered pale pink nail polish, one broken hair clip, and two and a half boxes of super-soft, aloe-infused tissues, I’d finally convinced Clay I was ready to move on.
    “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I said, hugging him in the doorway.
    “You sure you’re gonna be okay?” he asked, eyeing me carefully.
    “Positive.” I nodded. “So, are you flying tomorrow?”
    “Yeah, I’ve got that two-day San Juan layover.” He smiled.
    “You always get the dream trips.” I shook my head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
    “Six solid years of bribing scheduling with duty-free chocolate and wine. You could do it too, you know.”
    I just looked at him and rolled my eyes. “I will not pander to those people.” I laughed.
    “You should come with me, to Puerto Rico,” he said, eyes lighting up.
    “I can’t.” I shook my head. “Besides, I don’t want to cut in on your action. I hear old San juan is quite the party town.”
    “Please.” He rolled his eyes. “You have to come, and you can’t say no. I know you’re not working, and I also know you have nothing better to do.”
    “Thanks for the reminder,” I said, slumping against the door frame.
    “Besides, it’s all free. The flight’s free, and since you’ll be bunking with me, even the room’s free.”
    “Clay, I can’t,” I insisted.
    “I’ll even buy your first four mojitos,” he promised.
    “I’d love to, but really, I can’t. Kat’s expecting me to feed the kitties, and I have to start looking for a place to live. I can’t stay here forever, you know.”
    He peered down the hall and shrugged. “I don’t know why not. You could go months in this place without bumping into each other.”
    “True.” I smiled.
    “Listen, I sign in at seven. That’s A.M . Promise me you’ll reconsider.” He looked at me.
    “Just call when you get back,” I said, closing the door behind him.
     
    The second he was gone, I realized I really did feel better. I mean, it’s not like I was so deluded I thought a couple Bloody Marys and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s were the antidote. But still, it was nice to know that if I was involuntarily downgrading back to my former life of being single with an uncertain future, at least I wasn’t going it alone. I had great friends to keep me company and the freedom to live my life however I chose.
    It was like now that I was released from the weight of Michael’s never-ending supply of
opinions,
I could finally concentrate on
my
dreams, which, I hated to admit, had been put on indefinite hiatus so that I could live his. Maybe I could even finish that manuscript I’d started writing all those years ago, now that Michael could no longer peek over my shoulder and say things like, “Fiction is a waste of time.”
    Obviously, it was all just a simple matter of perspective. I mean, being dumped didn’t have to be the end, because if you think about it, it’s really more like a new beginning.
    I headed back to the den, reached into my bag, and turned on my phone, determined to deal with the onslaught of messages I assumed were already piling up, since in a base with just under fifteen hundred flight