Married by June by Ellen Hartman Page B

out.
    “No?” Alice’s eyebrows went up.
    “I was depressed.”
    Alice frowned as she pointed with her fork at the basket full of Cooper memorabilia. “Expunging him from the record.”
    “I guess.” Looking at the basket made her depressed for real. She’d learned as a child not to make herself too much at home in any of her temporary “uncles’” places. Cooper wasn’t like that, though. He’d left little pieces of himself in every room, confident in tomorrow. Gathering those pieces up had been lonely work.
    She’d been looking forward to finishing that spy novel and talking about it with Cooper. She’d already laid out the programs for the wedding with the picture of her mom, her and Cooper on the back page. Every time she saw a guy in tortoiseshell glasses, she’d think of Cooper, sitting in bed next to her, his leather notebook propped on his knees, fountain pen scratching across the page. How was she supposed to pack up all of that, her whole lifewith Cooper, and get rid of it? One of his T-shirts was bunched up and hanging over the edge of the basket. She pushed it back inside. She missed him already.
    Jorie took a bite of cake. The texture was rich but not dense. Alice must have beaten the eggs to within an inch of their lives. The creamy butter taste was cut with just a hint of sugar. It was one of the most perfect cakes she’d ever tasted and she could barely swallow it. She put her plate on the table.
    “I want him back.”
    The words surprised her. Not that she was thinking them. The thought had been building almost since he’d first said he was breaking up with her. But the way she said them. As if it was a done deal. As if anyone ever came back after a breakup.
    Alice chewed slowly as she stared at Jorie. The declaration lingered in the air, so heavy Jorie could almost see it.
    She’d dated guys before and always the breakup had included an undercurrent of relief that she could reclaim her single life. This time was different. She didn’t want her old life back. She wanted Cooper. She wanted the life he’d described in her fairy tale. She wanted to love him and to have every happy moment her mom had wished for her. She wanted this awful year not to have an awful ending, but thehopeful one her mother had envisioned for her when she died.
    “What’s the plan?”
    “I’m not sure. I need precedents. Women have been jilted before, right? What are the options for getting the guy to come back?”
    And with that simple question, they were off, considering ideas and alternatives with the same connection they enjoyed when they discussed wedding plans. This was one of the reasons she’d become friends with Alice in the first place—they’d had such a good time working together professionally.
    “You could pull a fake pregnancy, like in Officer and a Gentleman, ” Alice said.
    “Except the fake pregnant lady is not the one Richard Gere swoops in and carries out of the factory at the end.”
    “I love that scene,” Alice said. “It’s incredibly cheesy, but I love everything about it.”
    “The Navy uniform helps.”
    “It certainly doesn’t hurt. Cooper doesn’t have a uniform, does he?”
    “Not unless you count the lucky khakis he wears to poker night.”
    “What if you tried a Pretty Woman? ” Alice tapped her fingers on her thigh. “She ends up with the guy at the end.”
    “What? Reinvent myself?”
    “No. That won’t work. She goes from streetwalker to classy lady. You’re already way classy. If you reinvent yourself, you’d have to become a streetwalker and we don’t want that.”
    “Did anyone ever go from classy to trashy and still get the guy? Is that even possible?”
    “ Grease maybe. Right? Sandy swaps the poodle skirts for that slinky, full-body leotard thing and the hooker heels.”
    “And the gang gets together and dances their way through the senior carnival?” She’d never had the kind of optimism a movie musical required. “Cooper’s no John