The Boyfriend of the Month Club Read Online Free PDF

walking in, but she’d definitely made an impression walking out. Too bad it wasn’t the impression she’d been going for.
    Saturday evening traffic was still heavy. Grace turned on the radio, hoping to take her mind off the night’s disastrous events.
    “Welcome to the Track, Daytona Beach’s hottest radio station! It’s Saturday night and we’re bringing you the best of the Speedway Gonzalez Show.” This was followed by the familiar sound of an engine revving up in the background, the show’s “theme music,” so to speak.
    “Hel-lo, speedsters! This is Speedway Gonzalez taking you round and round Day-to-na Beach,” came the familiar obnoxious voice.
    Ugh!
    Speedway Gonzalez was Daytona’s Beach’s version of Tucker Max. He was obnoxious, chauvinistic, and just plain nasty. But it was also impossible to turn him off. Listening to his show was like rubbernecking on the radio.
    “Today we’re talking to Donna, who says her boyfriend isn’t paying her enough attention.”
    Grace cringed. She’d heard this one before.
    “So, Donna, tell me. Are you fat?”
    “What?” came a confused female voice.
    “You heard me, baby. Are you fat? Okay, so you are. Have you ever thought that’s the reason your boyfriend has moved on?”
    Grace rolled her car into her reserved parking spot behind the store just as Speedway was beginning to make mincemeat of poor Donna. Of course, it was no one’s fault but Donna’s. Everyone who called in to Speedway’s show ended up sounding like an ass. Grace wondered if the whole thing wasn’t just a big setup and the schmucks who called in nothing but wannabe actors trying to get discovered.
    She switched off the radio. Florida Charlie’s officially closed at nine p.m., which was in five minutes, but the Closed sign was already out. Long gone were the days they’d had to stay open late to finish ringing up all the last-minute sales.
    She walked around to the front of the store and stood back, trying to inspect the place with an objective eye. A ten-foot hot pink flamingo in flashing neon stood on top of the building next to the giant aqua-colored Florida Charlie’s sign. It was your typical tourist trap. Over five thousand square feet of wall-to-wall junk beckoning to wide-eyed children and their tired parents. Horny spring breakers need not enter. Florida Charlie’s was strictly G rated. It was her grandfather’s creation, given birth to some fifty years ago when Florida theme parks like Weeki Wachee and Silver Springs and Six Gun Territory had been booming attractions.
    Grandpa O’Bryan had named the store after his only child, Charlie, and sold things like “mermaid-watching kits” and inflatable seahorses. They gave out free samples of fresh hand-squeezed orange juice and shipped citrus all over the States. But the shop’s real appeal had been its quirkiness. Gramps had insisted the employees dress in costume. It didn’t matter what the costume was, as long as it could be linked to something having to do with Florida. Billboards starting as far north as Virginia lined Highway 95, encouraging visitors to “Stop at the Flashing Flamingo!” Besides the must-have mermaid-watching kits and the prerequisite inflatable marine life, there was always something exotic on display. Currently, it was the infamous alligator tooth.
    Her father had toiled alongside his father, and word of mouth, together with lots of blood, sweat, and tears (and all those billboards) had made Florida Charlie’s a central Florida landmark. When Pop graduated high school, he went off to college in nearby Gainesville to attend the University of Florida. That’s where he met Ana Alvarez, a Cuban emigrant from Miami majoring in elementary education. Pop had taken one look at Ana’s big brown eyes and fallen head over heels in amor (unlike Grace, Pop did believe in love at first sight). They were married six months later, and after graduation, Mami (pronounced ma-mee, what all good children called