Ready to Fall Read Online Free PDF

can manage the pizza. As you probably noted, I don’t have a dining table. It’s eat here at the bar or on the coffee table. Up to you.”
    Her eyes crinkled and she seemed delighted by the idea of sitting around the coffee table. “Coffee table. My ex wouldn’t approve and it feels rebellious. Do you mind?”
    “Wow, he sounds like a fun guy.”
    “You don’t even want to know. Definitely a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or in his case, a suit.”
    I grabbed the pizza box and plates, and asked her to bring over the wine and glasses. She settled in on the sofa and I took one of the leather chairs. I had a fire going in the small fireplace and it gave the room a warm glow. Diane was right about the cozy.
    “I can’t believe I found another person who loves jalapeño and pineapple together. Lauren, my best friend, hated it.”
    “This Lauren clearly doesn’t know what she’s missing. New York friend?”
    “Best friend from college. She’s a teacher. Our lifestyles were so different when I was married, but after the divorce she was the one person I could count on. I miss her.”
    “Sounds like a great friend, other than the whole bad taste in food part. How did you and the wolf meet? If you don’t mind me asking.” Curious about her past, and since we were neighbors, getting to know her felt like the thing to do.
    “Do you really want to know the whole sorry tale?”
    “Sure.”
    “If I tell you mine, will you tell me yours?”
    “My what?” I asked. “Sorry tale? I have a long list of them. You’d be bored or go running for the hills with all my woes.”
    “I doubt that. You seem like a nice guy.” She meant it. What she didn’t know was I was a wolf in flannel.
    “I can be a nice guy. Very nice. But I can also be an asshole,” I admitted.
    Her eyes wandered my face, searching for something. “Okay, so the brief history is I married right out of college. Whirlwind romance. Wealthy, ambitious, good looking—the whole family was like the Kennedys. Only they summered in the Hamptons and not Hyannis.”
    She said these places as if I knew what they meant.
    “It was a fairy tale. After the perfect wedding, life fell into place. I quit my entry level PR job and became ‘the wife’.” She frowned and picked a pepper off of her slice of pizza. “Being ‘the wife’ was a full time job of making sure everything about us and our homes were perfectly presentable to the outside world.”
    “I’m going out on a limb here and guessing things weren’t so perfect with Mr. Perfect.”
    “At first, yes. Then his career took over.”
    “What does Mr. Perfect do?”
    “Hedge fund. Big money. Taking money from the wealthy and making more money for the wealthy. Our lives became about money. How much we had, if we had more than so-and-so. We weren’t keeping up with the Joneses, we were the Joneses. And what was once perfect began to feel like a brilliant trap.”
    My mouthful of pizza, I gestured for her to continue.
    “Turned out money and things weren’t his only acquisitions. My husband also had the reputation for collecting girlfriends.”
    “Ouch,” I mumbled with my mouth full. Swallowing some wine, I found my voice. “He sounds like a tool.” I wanted to call him an asshole, but refrained.
    “Tool is too nice. Long story short, I caught him in flagrante delicto and the fidelity clause in our pre-nup kicked in. The affairs and even the divorce were kept hush-hush because of his family’s reputation. His parents strongly suggested I take an extended vacation while the final proceedings and settlement are ironed out.”
    “What year is this? I swear you are talking about some 1950s bullshit, pardon my language, about controlling parents and making the problem literally disappear.” The part about controlling parents reminded me of Kelly’s mother and her own meddling in my life.
    “At least they didn’t ship me off to Reno for a quickie divorce like the fifties.” Laughing, she hid her mouth