Pretty Much Screwed - Softcover

McCarthy, Jenna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425280683 ISBN 13: 9780425280683

Publisher: Berkley, 2015

Synopsis

Known for her “hilarious and spot-on”* memoirs I’ve Still Got It...I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It and If It Was Easy, They’d Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon, Jenna McCarthy turns her comedic talents to fiction with a novel about picking yourself up out of the gutter when life kicks you to the curb...

“I don’t love you anymore.”

For Charlotte Crawford, the worst part about being dumped after twenty years of marriage is that her husband, Jack, doesn’t want another woman; he just doesn’t want her.

Forty-two and clueless, Charlotte is a fish out of water in a dating pool teeming with losers. Just when she thinks she’s finally put her failed marriage behind her, it comes back to bite her in the ass...hard. Without warning, Charlotte finds herself staring down the barrel of a future she wouldn’t (she would totally) wish on her worst enemy.

Engaging, fearless, and relentlessly funny, Pretty Much Screwed is a story of love, loss, friendship, forgiveness, turtledoves, taxidermy, and one hilariously ill-placed tick.

*Celia Rivenbark, New York Times Bestselling Author

About this title

About the Author:

Jenna McCarthy is the internationally published writer of I’ve Still Got It...I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It,  If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon, and The Parent Trip, former radio personality, and recovering leopard-print addict. She lives in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband, two daughters, and lots of dog and cat hair.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE

“Lizzy, hang on, you’ve got to slow down,” Charlotte said. “All I heard was ‘fucking horse’ and something about thirteen dollars an hour.” She’d shouted that last bit into the phone. She knew that yelling probably wasn’t the best way to handle a hysterical person, but Charlotte Crawford had never really been good in an emotional crisis.

“Fucking whore, not horse. Amber. He’s been having sex with her for a year and a half. While I was paying her! In my house, Charlotte . . . in my house,” Lizzy wailed, and Charlotte struggled to make sense of her friend’s frenetic rant.

“Adam?” Charlotte asked. It was a stupid question. It’s not like Lizzy would be freaking out if she discovered her babysitter was having sex with the mailman or the pool guy. Of course Lizzy was talking about her husband.

“Yes, Adam! He says he loves her—she’s a child!—and he wants a divorce. He’s leaving me, Charlotte. He’s leaving me for that whore Amber, the one we trusted to watch our kids and took to Italy with us on vacation. How could I be so fucking stupid?”

That Whore Amber, which is how they would refer to her for the rest of ever, had been babysitting Lizzy and Adam’s kids since she was fifteen. Even though Lizzy’s daughter Coco was fourteen now herself, they’d kept That Whore Amber around to help take care of the two younger boys. Apparently, they weren’t all she was taking care of.

“I held her hand while they put her dog to sleep!” Lizzy was shouting now, too. “I bought her a goddamned Gucci wallet. I paid for her to take Italian lessons. Was he having sex with her in Italy, too? While I was out buying pottery for his mother and he was supposedly working? That whore. That asshole. Oh my God, this isn’t happening. Tell me it isn’t happening.”

Of course it wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. First of all, Charlotte’s best friend Lizzy was the most beautiful human being she had ever met. And not just in the inside-out, whole-person sense, even though Lizzy was generous and loyal and funny and volunteered all over the place and made her own homemade ravioli. Lizzy was also physically gorgeous. Naturally, and—if all jealousy were put aside—unassumingly gorgeous. And on top of the fact that Lizzy had actually been mistaken for Megan Fox on more than one occasion and had the metabolism of a thirteen-year-old boy with a tapeworm, she and Adam as a couple had it all. The beautiful, showcase home. The smart, athletic, genetically gifted kids. The award-winning purebred golden retriever wagging his tail just inside the crisply painted white picket fence. Who would throw all of that away? Who would throw Lizzy away? It just didn’t make sense.

“What a prick.” Charlotte couldn’t think of anything else to say. It’ll all work out? You’re better off without him? You’ll get through this? You’re still stunning; you’ll have men crawling all over you in five minutes? While all of that was doubtless true, Charlotte was pretty sure the only thing she’d want to hear if she were in a situation like this was what a prick.

“I’m getting a divorce,” Lizzy said, her words dripping with disbelief. “Me. I’m going to be one of those horrible, desperate cougars who wears padded push-up bras under see-through leopard-print blouses and goes out trolling bars every night. No. No, I won’t, because I hate push-up bras and animal prints and I don’t ever want another man and I don’t need another man and oh Charlotte, what am I going to do?”

What could her friend do? Nothing, that was what. Nothing besides try not to go crazy or postal or both while watching some bitch move into her house and take over her life like she was the newest Darrin on Bewitched.

“No shit” was Jack’s response when Charlotte told him about Lizzy and Adam that night. Then he settled himself into bed and switched on the TV as if that was all that needed to be said.

Charlotte had finally gotten the house picked up and the laundry folded and the kids into bed, and she’d been dying to talk to him about it all day. She needed to process the whole thing, which still seemed like a movie or a bad dream. Jack didn’t look as surprised or upset as she’d wanted or expected him to, which made her want to claw his eyes out.

“‘No shit’?” Charlotte said, grabbing the remote from his hand and flipping the TV off. “That’s it? Lizzy is my best friend in the world! This is major! A family is being destroyed here. A family we care about—or at least I care about them. Is that really all you have to say?”

“Well, yeah,” Jack said. “I mean, that and who’d screw around on Lizzy?”

Since that had practically been her own first thought, Charlotte was surprised at how much Jack’s comment infuriated her.

“So you’re saying it would be fine—or at least understandable—for a married guy to be fucking the twenty-year-old babysitter if his wife didn’t look like Lizzy?” Charlotte spat at her husband.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was saying,” Jack said, flipping back the freshly pressed Jonathan Adler duvet and grabbing his empty water glass. Charlotte sat on the bed and watched him stalk naked across the room to the bathroom. For probably the millionth time, she marveled at her husband’s utter lack of self-consciousness. She never walked around naked, not ever, not even to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Jack had no such hang-ups. He’d strut to the kitchen in the altogether, grab the orange juice from the fridge and drink it straight from the carton, standing right there in the door, illuminated like a gallery sculpture in the refrigerator’s spotlight. She would bet that he didn’t even bother to suck in his stomach when he caught her staring—not that he needed to.

Jack marched back into the room with a fresh glass of water, set it roughly on his nightstand and crawled back into bed, scrunching the duvet extra hard when he did, Charlotte was sure.

“Sorry,” she said now, shaking. She didn’t really mean it but she didn’t want to fight; she wanted to dissect and analyze what was happening to her friend. She needed to wrap her brain around it, make sense of it and tuck it neatly away on a shelf, like the puzzles she used to put together as a kid and then preserve with thick layers of craft glue so she’d never have to go through the trouble of doing them ever again. “I think I’m in shock,” Charlotte added. “The truth is I thought the exact same thing. Lizzy! Loyal, gorgeous, perfectly perfect Lizzy. It’s just crazy.”

All she wanted was for Jack to agree with her, to tell her that of course it was crazy, and then to assure her it would never, ever happen to her. She wouldn’t mind a warm hug and a “This is probably really hard for you, too,” if anybody was asking.

“The babysitter must be ridiculously hot,” Jack said.

“Really? You think so?” Charlotte yelled, enraged all over again. “She can’t be as hot as Lizzy and she’s not the mother of his children and he didn’t swear in front of her family and God and all of their friends that he would love her forever so who cares what she looks like? She’s a filthy whore and a hideous hag as far as I’m concerned. And you’re just an asshole.”

“And you married me,” Jack said, reaching for the remote.

“I guess that makes me an asshole, too,” Charlotte huffed, storming from the room.

·   ·   ·

Charlotte was stretched out on the white leather lounger, a furry zebra throw draped across her legs. The tranquil melody of a pan flute mingled with the sounds of gentle waves crashing on a shore somewhere above her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and tried to relax.

“Holy mother of God, that hurt like a sonofabitch,” she cried as Kelly plunged a needle deep into Charlotte’s skin. “Are you sure you didn’t just inject battery acid into my face?”

“Did you use the numbing cream I gave you?” Kelly asked, sliding the needle into Charlotte’s forehead again. Charlotte gasped in pain.

“OUCH! And yes, I did,” Charlotte told her. “Maybe it was expired or something.”

“Nope, it was a brand-new batch. When did you put it on? It really needs a good ninety minutes to get the full effect. Frown for me. Frown, frown, frown. Good. This one’s a little bitch, so breathe.” Searing pain ripped through Charlotte’s face.

“Be glad you live in Florida,” Kelly added. “If you lived out west where there’s no humidity at all, I’d have to use twice as much.”

“Christ, Kelly. I think you just hit a vein. Or my brain. And the jar said thirty minutes.” This was only Charlotte’s second time getting Botox, and she’d forgotten how awful it was. When she made the appointment (which might have been the same day she’d found out about Adam and That Whore Amber, but who was keeping track?), she’d mentioned being a little anxious about the pain. Kelly had suggested she swing by for some lidocaine lotion beforehand so she could be good and numb for her appointment. “Makes all the difference,” she’d said. If you use it correctly, Charlotte thought now.

“Do you want to hang out for another hour and let it sink in? You can read some magazines and I’ll see a few other clients and then squeeze you back in?” Kelly’s daughter Kaitlin had played soccer with Charlotte’s daughter Jilli for years, so there was an easy familiarity there.

Charlotte was sure that lots of the ladies who lined up to have Kelly fill their nasolabial folds and freeze their foreheads and jab them in the ass with vitamin B-12 (it wasn’t for weight loss; it gave them energy, they swore) had nothing but time on their hands, but she wasn’t one of them. She had work to do and errands to run and a school volunteer committee meeting to get ready for, and she’d left beds unmade and dishes in the sink just to get here at all. As it was, she’d probably be serving frozen pizza for dinner, a card Charlotte preferred to play only in emergencies. Healthy dinners were important, of course, but at the moment so was not losing your husband to a twenty-year-old whore.

“No, let’s just get this over with,” she told Kelly, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth. “But I want you to know, I hate you right now.”

“You’re going to love me tomorrow,” Kelly insisted.

·   ·   ·

The girls had been meeting monthly for “whine o’clock” for as long as Charlotte could remember, and she could count on one hand how many times Lizzy had been absent. She’d emailed the group at the very last minute saying she was feeling under the weather, but Charlotte knew what was up. Lizzy didn’t have the energy for the grilling that was sure to come. After all, it had been three months since Adam moved out, and her friends would be dying of curiosity: What was it like being alone? Was Lizzy seeing anyone yet? Didn’t she think it was time to get back on the horse? Charlotte could understand not wanting any part of that; she really didn’t blame Lizzy for bailing.

“At least she doesn’t have to worry about getting naked in front of someone new,” Kate said, mindlessly scooping a handful of smoked almonds out of a bowl on the bar. Charlotte was sitting on her free hand to avoid that very move. She shuddered at the thought of the dozens of strange, dirty fingers that had been in there. Plus, one little almond had seven calories. A few reckless handfuls could be disastrous.

“Can you imagine having that body?” Kate continued to muse. “At our ages, after popping out three kids? Jesus. It’s just not fair. But then again, what good did it do her?” She swirled her Cabernet thoughtfully. Kate was a former TV news anchor turned stay-at-home mom with a big personality and an even bigger mouth. Of the four friends, she also was the one edging closest to what some would call plump.

“Exactly. If a guy’s willing to trade in Lizzy for some coed slut, none of us are safe, are we?” Tessa twirled a dark ringlet nervously, hoping one of them would find a loophole in her dangerously irrefutable argument.

Lizzy and Charlotte had been friends the longest, ever since the day they met—could it have been more than twenty-two years ago?—freshman year in college. Charlotte had burst into Lizzy’s dorm room asking to borrow toothpaste because she couldn’t find her own, and they’d been inseparable ever since. When Charlotte had gotten her first job out of school right in Jacksonville, Lizzy had narrowed her own job hunt down to only the local options. They’d been through boyfriends and breakups and pregnancies and promotions together, but divorce was uncharted territory. Kate and Tessa had come later; Charlotte couldn’t even remember in which order. The four women and—until now—their four husbands had taken dozens of beach vacations, seen hundreds of concerts and thrown countless barbecues together. They all had kids roughly the same ages, equally impressive homes, similar cars (in fact, Charlotte and Kate drove the exact same Lexus LX, and Tessa’s husband Simon and Jack owned identical black BMW Gran Turismos) and parallel spending habits. Not that you couldn’t be friends with someone if you dressed in Dior and she shopped at Old Navy, but for things like planning ski trips and dinners out together, it certainly helped to be on roughly the same financial page.

“Nope, we’re pretty much screwed,” Kate agreed. “And can you imagine if Eric left me or Jack left Charlotte or Simon left you, Tessa? We’d never do it. Get naked in front of someone new, I mean. We don’t even like to walk from our lounge chairs to the pool at the tennis club in our swim skirts!” Kate laughed, and Charlotte couldn’t believe her friend actually thought this was funny. She tried to suck in her flabby tummy, but it was no use. She was a married, middle-aged mom; potbellies and cellulite came with the territory. Unless you were Lizzy, of course.

Pondering their shared body hatred, Charlotte was getting more depressed by the second. And also, drunker. That was it; she was going to start going back to the gym this week. Maybe she’d even call that awful personal trainer again and sign up for a series of torture sessions. Yes, that’s exactly what she would do. That much settled, she celebrated her imminent fitness by filling her wineglass all the way to the top.

·   ·   ·

“Where do you want to go to dinner tonight?” Jack asked. Charlotte felt a stab of irritation at the question. He stepped out of his suit pants and tossed them into the corner. She yearned to ask him to pick them up and put them in the dry cleaning bag she’d hung inside his closet door, but she didn’t want to argue, so she grudgingly continued straightening her hair. Her shoulder-length locks had once been naturally straight and shiny and caramel-colored, but these days it took a gallon of products and an hour of strong-arming with a flat iron and close to a thousand dollars a year in highlights to achieve the same “naturally” youthful look. Charlotte sighed.

“I don’t really care . . .” she said, trailing off. Why couldn’t he plan a date, just once? Pick the place, call the babysitter—the ugly, old, covered-in-varicose-veins babysitter, preferably—and just take care of it. Why did every si...

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0425280683
• ISBN 13: 9780425280683
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336