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Deva pulled her lips between her teeth and bit down to keep from laughing. Another member of the book club, Willow, the quiet, shy sweetheart of the group, asked, “What happened? Are you okay?”
Wynn stood from the chair and moved to the snacks, snatching up one of the chocolate croissants another member of our club, Lark, had brought with her. Trading booze for sugar, she took a big, heaping bite, packing her cheeks like a chipmunk gearing up for an endless winter. It was a little difficult to understand her garbled speech, but from what I could gather, her long-term, long-distanceboyfriend had ended things in a not-so-great way.
Wynn had moved down here for work when her boss, Jase—Farah’s older brother and Poppy’s now husband—relocated his company’s headquarters from Connecticut to Nashville to be closer to family. The job had been too good for her to quit, and she and Jase had an incredible working relationship. To hear her tell it, she could basically do anything she wanted, and he didn’t say a word about it. He’d offered her an insane raise in order to keep her after the move, so insane she couldn’t say no.
That had been a few years ago. She and her boyfriend had decided to do the whole long-distance thing, with the end goal being his eventual move here to be with her. Only, whenever it came time for him to pull the trigger, he came up with some excuse as to why he couldn’t move just yet.
It had been weighing on her lately, and we’d all hated seeing that she was hurting. In an effort to get their relationship back on track, she’d made an impromptu trip back to Connecticut to surprise him. However, she was the one in for the surprise when she walked in on him balls deep in the woman who lived across the hall as she was bent over the arm of the couch.
By the time she’d finished telling us about their breakup, she’d polished off another croissant, two chocolate mini Bundt cakes, and two handfuls of cheese cubes. Not only was I concerned for the state of my poor friend’s heart, but now I was worried about her cholesterol as well. That much cheese couldn’t be good for a person.
I stood from my chair and joined Wynn at the snack table, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and guiding her away before she could do more damage to her arteries.
She was right, men reallydidsuck.
“I’m so sorry, honey. He’s a son of a bitch, and you deserve so much better.” And he deserved to be kicked in the nuts by an angry bull.
The room filled with murmurs of agreement.
“You deserve to be mad and let it out.” I snatched the brownie she’d snuck off the table without me seeing as she lifted it halfway to her mouth. “But we’re going to do this whole breakup gig the right way.”
She looked at me with wide, watery violet eyes and cheeks still twice their normal size. “What’s the right way?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, it’s not stuffing your face until you give yourself type two diabetes. That asshole doesn’t deserve you getting hypertension over him.”
The mother figure of our little gang, an older woman by the name of Myra Montgomery, lifted her plastic cup of wine in commiseration. “Amen to that!” Myra might have been in her seventies, but the woman could hang with the best of them. She was also quite hilarious when she was at the tail end of a bottle of wine.
I guided Wynn back to her seat. “What you do is get your girlfriends together, pour a few drinks, and burn his shit in your backyard.”
A slow smiled curled the corners of her mouth upward and the sadness that had been filling her eyes only moments ago was replaced with that fire we were all familiar with. “Oh, I am abso-lutelydown for that.”
* * *
I stoodin a circle with Wynn, Farah, Poppy, and Deva in the middle of Wynn’s backyard. The rest of our book club wanted to be here for the impromptu Bastard Burn—that was what I’d cleverly named what we were doing—but things had come about rather unexpectedly, and not everyone could get out of their prior engagements.
A metal trash can sat on the ground in the middle of our circle, orange and yellow flames spitting and crackling from the large opening, sending sparking embers into the air. The fire provided a pleasant warmth against the nip of the fall night air.
“This is actually kind of nice,” Poppy said, speaking the words I’d just been thinking as she held her hands out to the flames to warm them.
Farah rubbed her hands up and down her arms for warmth. “You’re right. I think maybe I’ll have Cannon build us a firepit in the backyard.”
I looked to Wynn and leaned to the side just enough to bump my shoulder against hers. She blinked out of her daze, pulling her eyes from the dancing fire to me. I smiled reassuringly. “You ready?” I couldn’t ignore the uncertainty lingering on her face. “You know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. It’s totally okay to back out.”
She pulled in a deep breath, steeling her resolve. “No. I want to. I’m ready.” With a resolute nod, she moved closer to the trash can and held up what looked like a stack of cards. “His baseball cards,” she stated to no one in particular. “He coveted these like he was Gollum and they were his goddamn ring. I mean, what kind of grown-ass man still collects baseball cards?” She let out a bitter laugh. “I snatched these after I caught him nailing his next-door neighbor. They aren’t nearly all he’s collected, but they’re some of his most expensive.”
Poppy stepped forward, lifting her hands, palms out. “Hey, whoa. Sweetie, maybe you shouldn’t burn those then?”
I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, she has a point. Maybe you could sell them. Keep the money for yourself?”
Wynn looked at the stack of cards pensively for a few seconds before lifting her shoulder in a careless shrug. “Nah, I’d rather do this.”
The cards went up in a whoosh comically fast, making the fire sputter and hiss even louder.
I blinked, watching the cards curl and morph into ash. “Well, okay then.”
Deva let out a little snort. “That was kind of badass.”
“How much money do you think you just burned?” Farah asked.
