The Leftover Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

four other cars in the valet line at a hotel in Newport Beach. “Late again,” Wade sighed from the driver’s seat. “As usual.”
    My hand shook as I smoothed my newly cropped hair. It was way shorter than I’d ever worn it, and I wasn’t entirely convinced I liked it. But there was no turning back now. I thought about checking my reflection in the passenger’s visor mirror, but I knew I’d never hear the end of it if I did. “I’ve already apologized twenty times, Wade.”
    “ And yet that doesn’t make us any earlier,” he pointed out without looking in my direction.
    “What difference does it make anyway? You don’t care about impressing these people.”
    “You’re right. I don’t.”
    “So it’s just one more reason to snip at me all night. Got it.”
    “Can we try to make it through just one night, Roni?” he asked as he watched my former classmates walk toward the entrance of the hotel. I couldn’t help but notice how his gaze lingered on those of the female persuasion, especially those twenty-somethings that showed the most cleavage or the most leg. “Would that be impossible to ask?” he murmured without sparing me a glance.
    I glared at him. “I don’t know. Is it?”
    My stomach growled in answer. I hadn’t eaten anything other than lettuce, cucumber and celery for a week solid just to fit into my dress. It was a size eight, the smallest I had ever worn. My skin was clear, my teeth were straight and I now wore contacts that accentuated my green eyes. I was a different Roni coming to my ten-year reunion, and I couldn’t wait for everyone – and I do mean everyone – to see.
    Yet as many changes as I had made, and as much weight as I had lost since my daughter Meghan was born just six years before, Wade couldn’t be bothered with paying me a compliment. I wasn’t where he thought I should be yet, so he decided to use tough love as enforcement to get me to my goals. If I lost two pounds, he wanted to know why I hadn’t lost three. If I shaved 300 calories off of my diet, he wanted to know why I didn’t cut 500. And when we made love, if we ever made love, he was quick to point out how my body wouldn’t sag or show so many stretch marks if I just exercised properly and worked on muscle tone.
    Within the last few months, his tough love campaign involved ogling other women right in front of me as extra ‘incentive.’ Sometimes he would even flirt, and he made no apology for that, either.
    He didn’t know it, but that was why I decided to come to my ten year reunion. I was a strong, confident woman now, who could hold my head up as I passed by all the old classmates who used to make fun of me for being fat or socially awkward. If I could turn any man’s head – and by any man I mean one very important man – then it wouldn’t hurt so bad that I could no longer turn my husband’s.
    I needed a boost to my ego. I could only pray Dylan Fenn would finally prove to be just that.
    I was out of the car by the time Wade handed off the keys to the valet attendant. He fell into step behind me as I entered the double glass doors to the hotel lobby. I followed the stream of former classmates toward the elevator, which would take us up to the ballroom on the top floor with a 180-degree ocean view. Signs guided our paths, proudly welcoming the Class of ’88.
    Ten years , I thought. How much had changed. I left Hermosa Vista a shy, awkward girl. Now I was a woman. Better yet I was accomplished by most standards. After busting my ass in college for a business degree, I had a successful career as a manager for a consulting firm in Costa Mesa. I had married the CFO of said firm and even produced a child, thus meeting all my obligations as a woman of the 1990s ‘having it all.’
    In fact, I was in such a hurry to check these t hings off my list I settled for the first husband that came my way much like I accepted the first job opportunity that landed in my lap.
    I was always taught b eggars