The Break-Up Book Club Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF WENDY WAX

  “[A] sparkling, deeply satisfying tale.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Karen White

  “Wax offers her trademark form of fiction, the beach read with substance.”

  —Booklist

  “Wax really knows how to make a cast of characters come alive. . . . [She] infuses each chapter with enough drama, laughter, family angst, and friendship to keep readers greedily turning pages until the end.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “This season’s perfect beach read!”

  —Single Titles

  “A tribute to the transformative power of female friendship. . . . Reading Wendy Wax is like discovering a witty, wise, and wonderful new friend.”

  —Claire Cook, New York Times bestselling author of Must Love Dogs and Time Flies

  “If you’re a sucker for plucky women who rise to the occasion, this is for you.”

  —USA Today

  “Just the right amount of suspense and drama for a beach read.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A loving tribute to friendship and the power of the female spirit.”

  —Las Vegas Review-Journal

  “Beautifully written and constructed by an author who evidently knows what she is doing. . . . One fantastic read.”

  —Book Binge

  “A lovely story that recognizes the power of the female spirit, while being fun, emotional, and a little romantic.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Funny, heartbreaking, romantic, and so much more. . . . Just delightful!”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Wax’s Florida titles . . . are terrific for lovers of women’s fiction and family drama, especially if you enjoy a touch of suspense and romance.”

  —Library Journal Express

  Titles by Wendy Wax

  The Break-Up Book Club

  My Ex–Best Friend’s Wedding

  A Week at the Lake

  While We Were Watching Downton Abbey

  Magnolia Wednesdays

  The Accidental Bestseller

  Single in Suburbia

  Hostile Makeover

  Leave It to Cleavage

  7 Days and 7 Nights

  Ten Beach Road Novels

  Ten Beach Road

  Ocean Beach

  Christmas at the Beach

  (enovella)

  The House on Mermaid Point

  Sunshine Beach

  One Good Thing

  A Bella Flora Christmas

  (enovella)

  Best Beach Ever

  A Ten Beach Road Christmas

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Wendy Wax

  Readers Guide copyright © 2021 by Penguin Random House LLC

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wax, Wendy, author.

  Title: The break-up book club / Wendy Wax.

  Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020035472 (print) | LCCN 2020035473 (ebook) | ISBN 9780440001454 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780440001461 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3623.A893 B74 2021 (print) | LCC PS3623.A893 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035472

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035473

  First Edition: May 2021

  Cover design by Vikki Chu

  Book design by Nancy Resnick, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  To my husband, John. I miss you more than I can say. It’s way too quiet here without you.

  And to our sons, Kevin and Drew, who have grown into such amazing adults.

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Wendy Wax

  Titles by Wendy Wax

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  I finished writing The Break-Up Book Club in early 2020, just before the coronavirus took over our lives and we found ourselves in the kind of isolation that belongs in a science fiction or horror novel, not in the lighter, more upbeat novels I write.

  That August, my husband of almost thirty-five years succumbed to this virus. During the month he spent in the hospital, growing weaker and ever less responsive, I was not allowed to visit him. I couldn’t hold his hand, tell him how much I loved him, or advocate for him in person. Like all long-married couples, we had experienced our share of tough times, but nothing came close to this. I hate that he battled this horrible disease alone. That I could only have eyes on him via FaceTime or if a nurse held a phone to his ear so that he could hear my voice.

  I have set this novel pre-COVID, because I couldn’t bear to include it. This book, like the others I wrote before it, revolves around friendship and laughter and women who take whatever life throws at them and become stronger because of it. I refuse to write dark and heavy just because the world sometimes feels that way.

  I hope that as you read this novel, we have found a vaccine and beaten this virus into submission, and that we are once again living in a world we recognize.

  That friends and family can hu
g each other whenever they want to, that we don’t need masks to protect ourselves and others, and that book clubs, like the very special one in this novel, are once again meeting in person.

  Warmly,

  Wendy

  One

  Judith

  Favorite book: The Red Tent—yes, still!

  I read somewhere that the very first “book club” (female discussion group) took place in 1634 on a ship sailing to the Massachusetts Bay Colony when a “religious renegade” named Anne invited a group of women—no doubt exhausted from the voyage and in dire need of a break from their husbands and children—to talk about (and apparently critique) the sermons given at weekly services. (Which was nowhere near as relaxing as, say, a conversation about Bridget Jones’s Diary or Where the Crawdads Sing.)

  They continued these discussions when they reached land (because how else did you get out of the cabin to hang with your friends?). It seems this didn’t go down too well with the Bay Colony’s general assembly, because they condemned the gatherings and banished Anne to Rhode Island. Which seems a bit extreme and, frankly, confusing. Perhaps they believed that the state was too small for a worrying number of women to gather?

  Women have bravely faced the threat of banishment to Rhode Island ever since, gathering in reading circles and salons and literary clubs and societies. They were aided and abetted by the Book-of-the-Month Club, galvanized by Helen Hooven Santmyer’s “. . . And Ladies of the Club”, and ultimately validated by Oprah, whose meatier/weighty exploration of dysfunction and unhappy endings put the concept on the map. And perhaps introduced the need for wine at book club meetings so as not to lose hope completely.

  Our book club was started in 2004 by Annell Barrett, who owns Between the Covers Bookstore, which takes up the bottom floor of the historic home she lives in. It sits just OTP, which is Atlanta shorthand for Outside the Perimeter, aka I-285, the highway that encircles the city—kind of like the early settlers’ circling of the wagons—and separates the city folk and the suburbanites.

  Annell, who is a practical sort of woman, never saw a reason to give the book club a name or confine it to a single genre. She just wanted more readers in the store, and so she picked a book she thought people would like, wrote the title up on the chalkboard behind the register, and offered a twenty percent discount to anyone who joined the book club. Then she promised there’d be wine. (The food to soak up the wine and allow members to drive home legally came later.)

  There were five of us, including my friend and neighbor Meena Parker, at that first meeting in the carriage house behind the store, to discuss The Secret Life of Bees. The next month there were ten for The Jane Austen Book Club. He’s Just Not That Into You, requested by then twenty-five-year-old twins Wesley and Phoebe, who kept falling in love with the same commitment-phobic guys, took us to fifteen members.

  I chose this club over the one that started in our neighborhood because I love everything about Between the Covers and the carriage house behind it, and also because my neighbors liked to talk about one another more than the books. Plus, a few doors from home is not far enough away to avoid coming back for an especially messy meltdown, a lost cell phone, or a science project that is suddenly and inexplicably due.

  Over the last fourteen years, we’ve read one hundred and fifty-four books, which Annell has duly recorded in an official book club binder that she keeps at the front desk. The group swells and shrinks. We’ve had two different sets of siblings. Mothers and daughters. Best friends, work friends, and the occasional frenemy. Some members have left, never to be seen again. Others have come back. One member joined as Carl and transitioned to Carlotta, and both of them totally rocked their skinny jeans in a way I’ve always dreamed of.

  We’ve tried out nearby restaurants and bars, but we always end up back at the carriage house. It’s a reassuring and comforting constant in a world that can take you by surprise.

  Like the day I realized that Nathan, my husband of thirty years, had been rewriting our personal history. At first the revisions were so small I barely noticed. A minor detail reinterpreted. A tiny triumph appropriated and then repeated until it became an undisputed part of our marital history.

  I never made a conscious decision to allow it. But I didn’t call him on his embellishments, either. (Which in case you’re wondering is the emotional equivalent of faking orgasms and then being doomed to nonorgasmic lovemaking for the rest of your married life.) This is how he became the star of our life together and I became the supporting player.

  At the moment, he’s packing the things I laid out for him into the suitcase I left open on the bed. I started letting him think he was actually packing way before the creators of prepackaged meals began putting just enough premeasured ingredients in a box to convince the person assembling them that they were actually cooking.

  The first time I did this, the suitcase was made of cardboard, the mattress it sat on was lumpy, and the red-and-blue-striped tie I bought him for his first sales trip came from the sale rack at T.J. Maxx.

  “Thanks for picking up the dry cleaning.” Nathan stops long enough to flash me a smile. At fifty-eight, his hairline is in retreat and his features have begun to blur, but his dark eyes still crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and he can still make a person feel like the most fascinating being on the planet.

  “No problem.” I don’t bother to explain that I haven’t dropped off or picked up the dry cleaning for a good ten years now. Because really, how can he not know this?

  “Have you seen my lucky . . . Ah, there it is.” He lifts the red-and-blue-striped tie—now an Hermès that I reorder from Neiman’s as needed. “Can’t close a deal without this baby.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you could close a deal in your sleep if you had to.” The words of reassurance are automatic, but they barely fit through my lips. Because no amount of smiling is going to change the fact that he’s leaving for Europe to introduce the Chickin’ Lickin’ chain of “Southern fried chicken” to key cities. And he did not invite me to go with him.

  “I know you wanted to come, Jude, but I’m going to be racing from one meeting to the next. You’d be bored to death.”

  “I’m pretty sure I could have found a few things to do in Paris and Rome on my own.” I think about those magnificent cities all lit up for the holidays. The Christmas markets. The department store decorations. The Louvre and Musée d’Orsay. The presepe in St. Peter’s Square.

  He slips his Dopp kit, upgraded over periodic Father’s Days, into the corner of the Tumi suitcase. “You know I’d love to have you with me, but I’m going to be completely focused on business. I can’t afford to get distracted.”

  Somehow, I manage not to ask if he’s ever heard of multitasking. Nor do I point out that he might never have been anything more than a semi-successful salesman if I hadn’t been there to push and encourage him, to entertain potential franchisees and the company brass, while keeping a sharp eye on our finances.

  We never talk about the fact that I’m the one who kept us on a spartan budget so that we could buy our first Chickin’ Lickin’ franchise. Or that I put every penny my parents left me into a second franchise. All while running our home and our lives, serving on every PTA at every school our kids attended, being room mom and team mom and field trip chaperone and . . . it makes me tired just to remember it all.

  “I heard from the children today,” I say, because hearing from Ansley and Ethan, now in their mid-twenties and working in different cities, is always a treat and because I’m determined not to pick a fight before Nate leaves town.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Ethan thought the interview for the new sales position went really well.”

  “Like father, like son.” He nods approvingly as he tucks the last few items into his suitcase.

  “And Ansley and Hannah have picked a date over Labor Day weekend.”

  Nate’s shoulders s
tiffen, but he makes no comment. I’m happy that our daughter has found someone to love and share her life with. Nate can’t quite accept that Ansley is in love with and wants to marry a woman.

  I’m proud of both our kids. Thrilled that they’re happy in the paths they’ve chosen. That’s a parent’s job, isn’t it? To help prepare their children to stand on their own two feet. Wherever those feet lead them.

  It’s not their fault that that independence has left me in the cheering section of their lives without a game of my own.

  “Are we ready for the McCall dinner on the Thursday after I get back?” He zips the suitcase and lifts it from the bed. “And the cocktail reception at the club?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “You’re the best, Jude,” he says as he turns and walks toward me to drop a kiss on the top of my head. A friendly pat on the back follows. The kind you might give a teammate. Or the family dog. “I can’t imagine how I’d survive without you.”

  I follow him to the foyer, my smile frozen at the compliment that still somehow manages to be all about him. As he glances out the double glass doors to the black car waiting in the driveway, I swallow back the hurt and anger.

  Nate is going to Europe where he’ll be on the run, surrounded by people, and fully occupied doing business while I . . . another swallow of unpleasant reality . . . I’ll be filling my time with tennis and yoga and lunch with friends. Extra volunteer shifts. Unneeded mani-pedis. Finishing the book we’ll be discussing at our January book club.

  “Well, then.” I swallow one last time. “Have a good trip.”

  “Thanks.” He gives me a peck on the cheek and reaches for the doorknob. But then he hesitates.

  “You know what?” He turns, and my heart picks up a beat. Maybe he’s going to come back and give me a real kiss. Or maybe he’s going to tell me to throw some things in a suitcase and come with him—because there are plenty of shops in Paris and Rome. Or perhaps he’ll invite me to join him when the meetings are over so that we can have a few days together.

  “What?” Hope surges in my veins as I look into the eyes that used to spark with love and adoration.