Misery Loves Cabernet: A Novel - Softcover

Chapter One

Do not read and reread a man’s text message, or e-mail, or listen to his voice message, over and over again. Do not try to delve into his words for hidden meaning, or call your friends to get their opinions on “what he really means.” It’s a message, not the Constitution—you’re not supposed to study it.

I’m sitting on my living room couch, an empty bag of Doritos to my right and an unopened pack of Marlboro Lights to my left, writing a book of advice for my future great-granddaughter.

Why am I writing a book that won’t be read for almost a hundred years? A few months ago, I started thinking about all of the things I wish I had known when I was sixteen and wish I could remember now that I’m thirty.

I began my book a few months ago by telling her things like:

You should never have a job that you hate so much you think, “Thank God it’s Friday” every week of your life.

Not to mention:

You won’t meet your future husband at a bar.

And, my favorite:

Some days are a total waste of makeup.

In the past week, I’ve come up with a few other pieces of advice I like, such as:

If you are going to show up at someone’s house unannounced, call at least five minutes in advance. This gives your hostess four minutes to race around the house collecting dirty dishes to throw in the sink, and another minute to plan your death.

All women think they can utter the following phrase: “If I had a dime for every sane member of my family, I’d have a dime.”

Never drink wine from a box.

And just now...

Do not read and reread a man’s text message, or e-mail, or listen to his voice message, over and over again. Do not try to delve into his words for hidden meaning, or call your friends to get their opinions on “what he really means.” It’s a message, not the Constitution—you’re not supposed to study it.

Which is stupendous advice, if I do say so myself. So stupendous that I must immediately ignore it, walk over to my computer, and stare at the e-mail on my screen:

Charlie, you’re overthinking this. Have fun at the Halloween party. Talk to whomever you want. As you said before, we’ll figure this out when I get home. No worries.

Crap. What did Jordan mean when he wrote that? That we’re a couple who trust each other, and therefore I can have fun talking to whomever I want while he’s away in Paris?

That he likes me, even though I’ve insisted that we should be on a break while he is in Paris?

That he’s already on the set sleeping with the Second A.D.?

The past six weeks have been alternately perfect and hideous, and the hideous parts may be my own damn fault. I recently wrote to my great-granddaughter:

You know what the right thing to do is, even though it’s usually easier (and temporarily more fun) to do the wrong thing.

The problem is, I don’t even know if I have done the right thing. Let me back up. Six weeks ago, after a particularly brutal weekend acting as maid of honor at my little sister’s wedding, I thought I had finally found my perfect guy, my reward for all of my torturous years of dating. Jordan Dumaurier. After several frustrating starts and stops in our relationship, both of us were totally free of our entanglements, and we were now dating each other.

Those next six weeks should have been bliss. I wasn’t working much, since my boss was out of the country. One of the perks of being a personal assistant to a successful boss is that they sometimes take off for Belize on a moment’s notice, and you get some unexpected free time. So while international movie star Drew Stanton dined on plantains and readjusted his chakras in a Yucatán villa, I got to hang out with my new man and still collect a fat check every week, made out to Charlize Edwards.

Yes, Drew Stanton. As in the Drew Stanton: Golden Globe winner, Academy Award nominee, “Sexiest Man Alive”... complete lunatic.

But I say that with love. Drew is one of those forces of nature that seem to irreparably change all who enter his sphere of influence. In chaos theory, they refer to this as the butterfly effect. But if Drew is a butterfly, I’m frankly never sure whether to stare at him in admiration or pin him to a corkboard.

But enough about him, let’s talk about me. And Jordan.

Jordan’s gig as set still photographer on Drew’s last .lm ended when the shoot wrapped, so he had time off, too. We spent four delicious weeks holed up in my little house, eating lots of takeout, talking for all hours, and having sex, sex, and more sex.

Then, the unthinkable happened. He—gasp!—got a job offer. Oh, the horror.

Yes, I know, I’m being a big baby. People have to work. It’s reality. And I even advised my great-granddaughter:

Don’t be jealous of spoiled rich kids. If you don’t work, you don’t have honor.

But here’s the problem: he didn’t actually get one offer, he got two. One was to shoot stills for a .lm shooting in Los Angeles for the next three months. Taking that job would have allowed us to be in the same city during the holidays. The other job was for a movie shooting in Paris until the end of February. And he had to leave the next day.

He chose Paris. And I couldn’t help but feel that he had chosen Paris over me.

I spent the next sixteen hours hanging out with him as he packed, and temporarily breaking up with him.

I didn’t actually break up with him. What I did was tell him that long-distance relationships don’t work, and that we’d be deluding ourselves if we thought we could weather a four-month split after a four-week courtship. I then quoted the “if it was meant to be” line, and said that when he got home, if we both wanted, we could start up exactly where we left off.

It all sounded perfectly logical at the time. I’ve worked in the entertainment business for years, and (with the exception of the marrieds) I’ve yet to see a four-month break ever lead to anything but a breakup.

Ever.

So, at the time, I felt like I had no choice.

That said, the moment he left, I backtracked like crazy. My first day alone I worked myself into a tizzy, convinced that the moment he walked off the plane, he would go to the .lm set and run right into a gorgeous, thin woman with a sexy French accent and her sights set on my hunky American man.

Oh, she’s out there, and I hate her already. Cheeky little...

Anyway, I have spent the last two weeks continuing to work myself up into a psychological frenzy, and this past hour has been no different. I cannot leave my computer screen for more than two minutes. Gazing at his latest e-mail is like watching a bad car wreck, or the latest Tom Cruise Scientology video—you want to turn away, but you can’t.

I walk back to my living room, grab my notepad and my unopened cigarettes, head back to my office, look at the screen again, and stew.

Charlie, you’re overthinking this. Have fun at the Halloween party. Talk to whomever you want. As you said before, we’ll figure this out when I get home. No worries.

He wrote xoxo, J. Not Love, Jordan. Not even Love, J. Nope—xoxo.

Okay, yes, it’s better than Cheers! Jordan, or (God forbid) Best, Jordan. Or his initials—JAD—that would be obnoxious.

But, I don’t know, I use xoxo for the friends I adore, not the man I’m sleeping with.

Was sleeping with.

Then dumped for no good reason.

Scratch that. A very good reason.

Besides, we’ve never said the L word to each other, and I’d rather hear it in person (preferably when he’s sober and standing up) rather than in an impersonal e-mail.

My God, if I spent half as much time exercising as I do obsessing about men, I’d weigh what it says on my driver’s license by now.

I glance over at the pack of cigs and sigh. I also quit smoking six weeks ago. I didn’t do it f or Jordan, I did it f or me. Well, the first six hours I did for me. After that, my only motivation was the promise of sex whenever I wanted. Which does help with those oral cravings, I must admit.

But then the sex went to Paris, and now I’m just abstaining because I really enjoy getting road rage, eating enough in a day to sustain a small horse, and constantly wanting to slam my head through a wall.

My home phone rings. I pick up on the second ring. “Hello?”

If you ever become a rock star, whether you have one hit or twenty, you are still never entitled to have a CD entitled The Essential Collection.

“Huh?” I ask.

“That’s my advice for your book,“ my best friend Dawn says. “I mean, you know, the Beatles could get away with it. But Hall and Oates? Tom Jones? Please.”

“Not bad,“ I say, writing down her advice.

“Or The Ultimate Collection,“ I hear my other best friend, Kate, say in the background on Dawn’s end of the line.

“Who has that?” I hear Dawn ask Kate.

“Shalamar and Ace of Base,“ Kate says.

I hear Dawn mutter “Ugh,“ as I ask her, “Where are you guys?”

“The Grove. Kate dragged me here so we could do a little Christmas shopping.”

Ah, yes, the last week in October. The week most stores start putting up Christmas decorations—and Kate becomes a raving Christmas lunatic. You would think one of the city’s top political radio show hosts would view the holiday season with a certain sense of perspective and decorum.

You’d be wrong.

Last year, Kate’s apartment included one dancing Santa, two Christmas trees, and a life-size flying reindeer.

“Tell her about the New Year’s resolut...