Play Fling (A Stupid Cupid Book) by Amber Scott Read Free Book Online

tried something extreme?
Matching tattoos? Or worse, something desperate? How sorry was her
friend? Brooke felt a sudden frenzy in her tummy. Not that she
could think of any extreme or desperate example. After all, what
was extreme when it came to Millie? Turn Brooke into a mail order
bride?
    No. She was just being silly. Millie was
spontaneous and flashy. Her surprise would be fun, Brooke
reaffirmed, and her anticipation buzzed back to life. Tonight would
be better than any romance novel. Anything would sparkle up
Brooke’s typical Friday night, though. Sampson might be a good,
albeit hairy, listener but spontaneous, he was not.
    “Promise me one thing,” Millie had said on
their third call that afternoon. “You will let me do this. I need
to do this and I need you to just sit back, relax and put up with
my surprise. All right?”
    After the six day Millie drought, Brooke
might have agreed to chubby nudist speed dating just to have her
friend back. Sure, she’d been angry. Yes, she had put her foot
down, so to speak, but six days? Come on.
    Clearly, if a few days absence bothered
Brooke this much, she had grown too dependent on Millie. Who could
blame her, though? Her family, parents included, didn’t approve of
her divorce. Her sister, busy with two young kids, hardly called.
Plus, when she’d left Jason after fifteen years of marriage, she’d
also lost all her friends.
    Shope’s voice droned in the background of her
thoughts. “…D-day marked the bloodiest….”
    At first, to be fair, no one had claimed a
side. Not family, not friends. Probably praying the separation
wouldn’t progress into the big “D” word. Who could blame their need
for denial? She didn’t. How could she? She’d thought she was living
a fairytale, too. For years. Until King Charming stopped bedding
his queen. Even then, she kept hoping.
    When her own D-day had approached, the
genders took sides. Wives for Brooke, an occasional husband thrown
in for good measure. They phoned in offers of help, shoulders to
cry on, ears to bend. But, when she took the offers—and man, did
she—every one of them inevitably asked, what went wrong? She still
didn’t have an answer. There wasn’t another woman. No secret
gambling. No abuse or lies. She hadn’t met anyone new. Brooke
couldn’t say what went wrong and, one by one, her supporters snuck
out of camp.
    Sympathetic pats evolved into hesitating eye
contact and changing subjects. Phone calls dwindled, went
unreturned. Along with the house, the mini-van, most of his income,
and all of their assets, Jason Munkle won sole custody of their
friends.
    Debbie Johnson-Hines, dame of wives poker
night, summed it up. “I don’t know what you did to lose Jason,
honey, and I suppose it’s none of my business, but whatever it was couldn’t have been a small thing. You have to understand,
they’re uncomfortable around you. They aren’t sure who you are
anymore.”
    Brooke still wished she’d smacked the
collagen right off the woman’s lips. She couldn’t, though. It just
wasn’t in her. She’d mustered a gasp. Brooke never had the nerve
for violence. Besides, she’d been too stunned to do more than
leave, stuttering a goodbye. Sure, everyone began thinking the
worst. She’d heard the whispers. Selfish, superior,
frigid .
    Brooke got the blame.
    Shope’s chalk screeched over the blackboard.
The clock on the wall had to be broken. Brooke drummed her fingers.
She pretended the girl who’d called her fifty was absent instead of
doodling, as usual, two feet away.
    To think, in the beginning, she’d actually
fooled herself into thinking they’d be the first couple in history
to rise above the pettiness of divorce. They’d stay friends. Her
need for acceptance and empathy from her peers had clawed at her.
She’d resisted. She refused to blame him for her choices. She rose
above it.
    Jason did not. He never corrected the flying
assumptions. Very upstanding of him. She could just see him, cowing
his