The Leftover Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

honestly didn’t give a shit what Wade thought about it as I flung my arms around Bryan. We weren’t here for Wade, for once, so I was going to do what made me happy.
    No matter what that meant.
    “Oh my God! Look at you!” Bryan exclaimed as he practically lifted me up off of the ground with a massive bear hug.
    “Look at you !” I shot back. I could feel the solid muscle underneath his expensive clothes. His blond hair now had sunny highlights, and framed the angular face no longer obscured by glasses. He’d corrected his vision courtesy of laser eye surgery and, after years in braces, his teeth were white, straight and perfect.
    Wade cleared his throat behind me. “You remember my husband, Wade,” I said.
    “Of course,” Bryan responded cheerfully as he stuck out a hand. Wade glared at it for a moment before he accepted it, and I was sure he was counting the seconds until he could escape to the men’s room to wash off the gay.
    Bryan hooked his arm in mine to lead me away from my dour husband, who opted to wait at the bar for his Old Fashioned. “Wait until you see everyone. Tiffany McGill? Fat. Bobby Dillard? So gay. And of course… there’s Dylan.”
    Even t hough I hadn’t seen him since my junior year in college, my heart still leapt when I heard his name. “He’s here?” I whispered breathlessly.
    Bryan pointed to a handsome man in a dark suit, standing in a group of almost familiar faces near the window facing the ocean.
    There was a time I thought Bryan could really give Dylan a run for his money once he blossomed into the beautiful man I always saw peeking out from the unrefined edges. But I had been wrong. So very, very wrong.
    Dylan was even more muscular than he had been playing ball in high school. His shoulders were broad, and the suit he wore could barely contain those thighs and that fabulous ass. His dark hair was long, dusting the back of his neck, and it was so thick it screamed for hungry fingers to grab a handful. His face was still smooth and that smile was still killer… but those dark eyes remained the most lethal weapon in his arsenal. I knew it with all certainty when his head turned slightly and they locked with mine. Immediately his face brightened and he abandoned his present company to make a beeline for Bryan and me.
    “ Roni?” he said, almost disbelievingly. His eyes traveled over my face and my single-digit-size figure with warm appreciation. He took me into an immediate hug that was so strong it took my breath away. “God, you look fantastic! Marriage really agrees with you.”
    It was all I could do not t o scoff directly into his face.
    It was no surprise that he knew I was married. Our moms were still great friends, though they no longer shared a house together. After their kids had moved out, they expanded their social lives and both found new romances of their own. My mother married again, Bonnie did not. Instead she was enjoying her Blanche Devereaux era with gusto, a page taken, no doubt, from her son’s own playbook. Shared holidays had scattered to the wind, especially since Wade had definite ideas on what holidays should look like. Hanging out with Bonnie’s beau de jour didn’t exactly fit into his “traditional” family values.
    Neither did my upbringing, really. We attempted only one shared holiday with the Moms the first year we were dating and it was awkward as hell. After that, Wade insisted on traveling back east to spend major holidays with his own traditional (read: boring) family, to teach me what normal life was supposed to look like , since clearly I didn’t know.
    That normal life did not include Dylan, whom Wade found immature, superficial and flaky. “An actor of all things. Seriously, Roni. Do you really want your daughter to grow up with that kind of male role model?” he had questioned.
    I thought back to my unrequited crush over the years and conceded no, I probably didn’t.
    But the danger wasn’t to my daughter. The minute