The Leftover Club Read Online Free PDF

couldn’t be choosers.
    I was simply along for the ride when I met Wade in 1989, while interning at Sherman, Waxler and Cohen during my sophomore year of college. He immediately took me under his wing to transform me from the pudgy, dull office assistant into a fully realized woman. I was Eliza Doolittle to his Henry Higgins. Our dates centered around physical activity, which helped me drop twenty pounds over the course of six months. He rewarded me by taking me as his lover, and he pulled out all the stops to show me what kind of life I could expect now that I was inching ever closer to perfection. It was a whirlwind romance and I was married by the age of 21. Meghan came along when I was 22, and ironically that became my downfall.
    I gained back those twenty pounds with the pregnancy, plus ten more for good measure. Wade was aghast by my backsliding . He tried to get me back on track, but pregnancy wasn’t the warm and fuzzy experience I expected it to be. Instead I was either hunched over the toilet or unable to get out of bed as my offspring grew within me like a creature from Alien . I ceased making carefully planned dinners, or even caring what I ate. And I found myself much too tired to fulfill his many expectations. Soon he spent more nights at the office than he did at home. Gone were the spontaneous trips and the late night dates with wine and roses. Instead I got slapped on the ass to assess how many inches had accumulated there just by the jiggle.
    And lovemaking? Fuggetaboutit. By the time Meghan was born, Wade hadn’t touched me in months. The alienation continued throughout her first year, when I was struggling to meet the various demands of my career and motherhood, which was every bit as challenging as the pregnancy had been.
    To the outside world , however, I had it all. My husband was handsome and successful, and our child was beautiful and sharp as a whip. I lived in a large, four-bedroom home in Costa Mesa and drove a brand new car I could pay for myself with my six-figure salary. So what if my marriage had virtually collapsed within its first two years? I still had the two-carat diamond on my finger, so as far as the world was concerned, I was ‘living the dream.’
    I was one of the normal people now.
    I decided to use this to my advantage when I got the notice about the ten-year reunion. All I had left was the mask I wore, and I had spent quite a bit of time honing it to perfection.
    So why were my hands shaking when I walked into that ballroom?
    Oh, right. Because it was all a big, fat lie and I was nothing but a fraud.
    You’d think I’d be used to that by now.
    I affixed my name tag with the smile of bravado I had perfected over the last six years and headed toward the bar.
    As usual, Bryan Dixon was the first schoolmate I recognized. My heart soared to see his beautiful face. No longer gangly or nerdy, he had transformed into the elegant man I had always predicted he would be.
    Most of this he had to do withou t me, since Wade never approved of my having a close male friend. And Bryan was as close as any person could be without actually having the intimacy of sex. His being gay had been strike two for Wade, as he didn’t want to expose our child to a “deviant lifestyle.” It was a lifestyle that took Bryan away from conservative Orange County the minute he was able to flee. He moved to Los Angeles and started a career in film, using his computer nerd cred to work in the emerging digital technology taking place there. The lucky sonofabitch got to play for a living. That was the last nail in the coffin as far as Wade was concerned.
    So I saw Bryan less and less over the years, and inwardly this fueled my resentment for my husband. If there was anything good in my life, anything that made me truly happy outside of our daughter, he was determined to crush it underfoot. It was ongoing punishment for having betrayed him, by turning my back on the person he had created me to be.
    As a result, I