The Breakup Mix Read Online Free Page A

along the way. She held my hand the entire time.
    When we finished the devastation tour, she turned to me and sighed. “Well, you know you can stay with me as long as you want. I wouldn’t want to stay here either.”
    “What about Mark? Don’t you have plans tonight?”
    She sighed and tried to chuckle. “I got a Dear Jane email. So that bottle of wine is for both of us.” She threw her arm around my neck, grabbed the bottle and my bag, and we headed out to her car.
    We drove in silence for a few blocks and then she looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “I have just the thing for you. You might remember this.” She turned on the radio and Beyoncé’s voice, along with Alissa’s, resonated in the car.
    I laughed in spite of myself. “You still can’t sing for shit.”
    “No, but I can still make you laugh. Do you remember this CD? Chance made it after her first fiasco. She burned me a copy during my second divorce and now? Voilà .” She handed me a red CD.
    I took the disk and read the label. “The Breakup Mix? What all is on here?”
    “Your new life’s blood, my friend. You will grow to cherish that CD. I’m actually on my third copy, truth be known. I didn’t know it was possible to wear them out.”
    Three bottles of wine and two chick-flicks later, I knew I was slurring my words, but I really didn’t care. “You know what that bastard had the audacity to do? He left some of his shit lying around the house. Like he can just waltz back in whenever he wants to my house and get it whenever he decides. I swear he did it on purpose. I found his cuff links, his . . . oh wait!”
    I tried to jump off the couch but ended up stumbling around until I got my balance. I pointed at Alissa. “Stop laughing at me.” I grabbed up my purse and dumped the contents until I found the CD. I waved it at her. “She’s right! She’s totally right! He thinks he can just discard me and I’m going to be calm and professional about it. Well fuck him. He’s going to pay me half for all that shit he took, and he is going to buy me out of that house. And you know what else I’m going to do?”
    Alissa laughed. “I’ve never seen you like this. Tell me, what are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to box up all his leftover shit that he didn’t care to get the first time and put it out in the yard. That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll change the locks and make him regret the day he ever walked out on ol’ Dani.” Alissa didn’t have time to cheer before I crumpled to the floor and cried, “Why did he have to do this to me?”
    “Oh, honey.” She slid to the floor beside me. “I know.”
    “We had it all. Money, house, careers, each other . . . no babies, though. I’m never going to be a mother, Lis. I’m never going to be a mother.” My sobs rolled through my body as my grief surfaced. “Now I really am alone in this world.”
    She pulled my face up to meet hers. “Never.” She shook me once. “Never. You got that?”
    Sunday morning I woke up in Alissa’s guest room with very little recollection of how I got there. I was barely over my Chicago hangover when Alissa uncorked our first bottle last night. Now it was a double whammy. I made a pot of coffee and scowled at the clock that read 7:43 a.m. Why I can’t be more like Chance and Alissa and sleep until ten o’clock on the weekends, I’ll never know. The weight of life changes settled heavily on my chest. Everything has changed and now I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t have to go home any time soon, I have no shots to give myself, no appointments to make. My entire paint-by-number life just changed in twenty-four hours. As I’m sitting here in another woman’s house, drinking another woman’s coffee, I wonder how to do this in my own house—in my own life. Chance makes it look so easy—being single and no plans. All of my plans involved Barry and children. Now what?
    I curled up on the couch and buried my head in the throw