Beach Season by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

jacked up about that, too.”
    “She should be,” Estelle said loudly. “We can’t screw that one up. That’d burn our butts.”
    “And she’s stressed about her sister’s wedding dress. She wants it to be perfect, more than perfect. She wants it to be a wearable dream.”
    “She still hasn’t finished the bridesmaids’ dresses, either, she’s got to get it right for the clan. Go, Scotland.”
    “I’m right here, ladies,” I said, still drawing, the oranges blurring and smearing, until I grabbed a black pencil and added a streak of black to the orange Popsicle/sunset/Costa Rica colors. I wouldn’t think about the scary reporter, I already had enough to worry about.
    “She has a lot going on.” Leoni’s breath ruffled my hair.
    “Too much,” Estelle agreed. “But she’ll manage. She’s a woman with iron panties.”
    “Iron panties? Gee, thank you,” I said. I held up the drawing of the non-Halloween orange-and-black bridesmaids dresses. Not bad.
    “Gorgeous,” Estelle said. “If women must get themselves swindled into marriage, if they lose their minds to lust and society’s rules of what a woman should do, they must come to you, June. Panty power, that’s what it is.”
    “Panty power,” Leoni breathed. “That is stunning.”
     
    That night I circled the work tables in my studio, again and again, while Reece jetted in and out of my head.
    I have part of a blue rowboat in the corner where I’ve stacked all my favorite books. I have a blue cheetah lamp stand and art supplies stacked on open shelves painted yellow. I have two six-foot-tall white dressers filled with wedding dress paraphernalia.
    I need all of it to keep me creative and focused.
    But it sure wasn’t helping me keep my mind off Reece.
    Reece, Reece, Reece. June and Reece. Reece and June.
    Oh, for heaven’s and Pete’s sakes, June!
    When I was done I crawled into bed and wrote in my Worry Journal.
     
     
    Seven Things I’m Worried About
     
    1. Another sneaker wave.
    2. Sharks in a tidal wave that might land on my deck. What would I do?
    3. Business failing because no one wants to get married anymore because they realize it is a silly thing to do, akin only to prison.
    4. Not being able to resist the Greek god.
    5. Never being able to divorce Grayson, the process dragging on and on until I give up because I am too broke and too much of an emotional wreck to deal with it anymore. Then Grayson gets what he wants, and I will be tied to him for life until I am an old and feeble woman collecting plastic bags and chatting with spiders.
    6. The article. What if the reporter thought I had a sponge for a brain and said so?
    7. Estelle. Is she lonely living alone? I think I’ll make her a lace shirt.
    I played online Scrabble. I play online Scrabble with anonymous other people across the world. I almost always win. I did not win a single game that night, though I did spell these words: “nymph,” “lust,” and “green.” I could not get the gentle eyes of a man on a chariot out of my head to save my life.
    I ate a Pop Tart and a teeny, tiny handful of buttered popcorn.
    Okay, two Pop Tarts.

C HAPTER 5
    “This divorce could have been settled months and months ago,” I said, my anger simmering.
    “But I don’t want a divorce,” Grayson, my soon-to-be-ex-husband replied, clipped and definitive. His hair was brushed back, nice and tight. Some women thought he was attractive, in a well-groomed, fashionable, rich attorney sort of way.
    I did not.
    I grunted with deep frustration and tapped the conference table in Cherie’s office. It was new. Another divorcing couple had had a fight on it over a lizard or something, and the table had split in two. “That’s out of your hands. We’re not living in the caveman era where a man can refuse to divorce his wife, then go out and slay a dinosaur for dinner with a spear.”
    “I don’t think he’d be able to slay a big dinosaur,” Cherie said, beside me. She was wearing a tight,