Shock is the more likely option. But I plan to take advantage of the numbness and clarity of mind while it lasts. “You were having sex with another woman in our bedroom. It’s exactly what it looks like.”

The bedroom I never stopped thinking of as his bedroom, my mind observes.

Shut up, mind.

“Rachel, please, listen. You’re the one who’s meeting my parents tonight.”

“Oh, my God, is that supposed to help? You’ve just shown me your butt. Literally! The butt of a man who’d have sex with one woman on the same day another one is cooking for his parents!”

“Rachel, please. You’re the girl I want to marry.”

Those words stop me cold for half a second. Because they are—were—the prize I coveted.

And then I come to my senses: Werner is not a prize.

He’s a total and complete loser who just did the lowest thing a boyfriend can do.

“Sure.” I barely recognize my voice. It is hard, dark, cynical. “She’s just the girl you…”

But apparently I have used up my ration of curses this morning, and I don’t finish the sentence.

“Rachel, listen to me. If you leave because of this, I’ll never forgive myself. You’re my perfect woman.”

My perfect woman.

And what did Hettie call me at work today, just before I was replaced by a kiosk? The perfect employee.

Perfect.

Perfect.

What horse pucky.

This being perfect thing?

It’s not working out for me.

2

Brody

How does a bad boy end up hosting a book club on his boat?

I’ve asked myself this question several times over the course of this wretched night. We’re on my 30-foot fishing boat, currently anchored in the middle of Sentinel Lake. The sun has not yet dipped behind the mountains. The air is warm, the water still, the birds starting to sing. By most measures, I should be in my happy place.

Yeah. Not so much.

“You’re out of toilet paper!” One of the book-clubbers, a whippet-thin, pale-skinned blond woman named Jennifer, pokes her head into the cockpit as she returns from the head. Jennifer has her mini-poodle-chihuahua mix—Chicklet—in a sporty sling-bag obviously made for that purpose. He has been intermittently yapping and whining, and I feel his pain—he’s zipped up to his ears. “I used the last. Where do you keep the extra? I can swap it in.”

“What do you mean, out of toilet paper?”

“I used it up,” Jennifer says. “Also, the toilet’s clogged.”

I close my eyes. “You’re kidding me. How many squares did you use?”

She shrugs.

“Didn’t you hear me say four squares?”

She crosses her arms. “I thought you were joking.”

I’d given all the book-clubbers a lecture about the perils of too-much TP in a boat head.

Which they had apparently ignored.

My jaw aches from clenching it.