The Lonely Hearts Club

by Brenda Janowitz

  “Thanks for giving me the chance to set the record straight,” I say. “Anyone have anything to add?” I ask the crowd.

  The whole crowd clamors for a chance to speak. I have no I idea who to talk to, who to give their due. But then I hear a voice. A familiar voice. I spin on my heel and see Max.

  “I have something to add,” Max says. I rush over to him. He’s holding his phone, which is playing a clip of the interview I just did. I was hoping he’d see it. I have no idea how he knew it was on, or how he got here so fast, but I don’t care. I’m just happy he’s here.

  We don’t say a word. We come together and kiss. I throw my arms around his body and he’s got his around mine. We kiss and we kiss and we kiss. I can barely breathe, but I don’t care.

  “I missed you so much,” he says.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he says. And then he kisses me again.

  I can feel the light of a camera on me but I don’t care. We kiss and we kiss and we kiss, like it’s the end of the world.

  But it’s not. It’s just the beginning.

  57 - Start Me Up

  “Well, what did they say exactly?” Max asks. We’re at my apartment—my new apartment—and we’re eating Thai takeout on the floor, drinking Riesling out of the new glasses I bought earlier at the flea market across the street.

  “I don’t know, really,” I say, trying to recall my conversation from earlier today. “Something about getting the site back to its former glory. I wasn’t really paying attention to that part. I kind of got stuck on the whole we-may-be-interested-in-buying-your-site thing. That was the important part, right?”

  “Are you going to get something in writing, something that guarantees they’ll buy the site?” Max asks. “We don’t want to lose out on this again.”

  “We have a meeting set up next week,” I say. “But I thought it would be a good idea to reconfigure things now, so that the site’s up and ready to go with the new format before our meeting. Let them see what it can do. Get that bid up as high as we can get it.”

  “Get that bid up?” Max asks. “Who are you right now?”

  “Still me,” I say and smile. I take a bite of pad thai, and then put a forkful up for Max to try.

  “What if they want a total redesign?” Max asks.

  “Then,” I explain, “I’ll tell them to hire you to do a total redesign.”

  I can tell Max is the tiniest bit annoyed—after all, I got little to no details from Love, Inc.’s parent company about the terms of selling my site to them. But I got the gist: They’re interested in the new direction that the site is taking. Since the Lonely Hearts Club Ball fiasco, the site has become a place where people try to find other lonely hearts. It started when I began posting open letters to Max, begging him to take me back. It wasn’t long before others followed suit, and then still others posted messages looking for people they’d missed—people they met at clubs but didn’t exchange numbers with, people they passed on the street, and even people they worked with who they were afraid to confess their true feelings to.

  I love the new direction the site’s taken—the focus is no longer rage and anger, it’s love. Finding love, getting love back, and looking for love wherever you can. Sure, there’s still rage and anger in there, there’s always bound to be some when there’s a breakup, but the negative is all focused on a place of letting that go and getting back to the positive part. Chloe even suggested we throw another Lonely Hearts Club Ball next year, but with a slightly different theme. This time, it will be about people who are alone on Valentine’s Day, but looking for connections with other people. Looking for real relationships.

  Is it any wonder that Love, Inc.’s parent company wanted a piece of it? The meeting’s next week, but this time I’m taking Max’s advice. I will take the meeting seriously—no more hanging onto the past for me, thank you very much. I even let my mother take me shopping for a new dress to wear to the meeting.

  I’ve been in touch with my old band. It was fun rehearsing and trying to get the band back together, but the truth is, that chapter of my life is over. It died when Billy died. It just took me a while to figure that part out. Frankie thinks I should try to break out as a solo act. He’s all for helping me when I need it, but he’s really focused on teaching and being a good dad. (Stacey delivered a healthy baby boy. I sent them a toy guitar as a baby gift.)

  “What do you want it to look like?” Max asks. “I’m assuming we’re going with the old color scheme?”

  “No,” I say. “I’d like to add some color.”

  “You want pink?” he asks. “Who are you and what have you done with my girlfriend, Jo?”

  I love it when Max calls me his girlfriend.

  “I don’t necessarily want pink,” I say. “I don’t want it to look like the Love, Inc. site. It needs to have its own stamp. Chloe suggested these blues and these greens. She worked some salmon in, and I think it looks great.” I hold up the sketches Chloe did of a sample new home page for the site.

  “So, pink.”

  “It’s not pink,” I explain. “It’s salmon.”

  “Salmon is pink.”

  “It’s not pink!” I insist. “You know I hate pink. Salmon is totally different. Chloe said it was elegant and subtle.”

  “Chloe’s lying to you,” Max says.

  “It’s salmon!” I say and swat at Max’s shoulder. “Stop teasing me!”

  “Oh, I’m not going to stop teasing you,” Max says, as he pulls me to him. “What would be the fun in that?”

  We kiss, and he puts his hand to my cheek. Before I know it, a tiny peck has become a full on make-out session—his hands are in my hair, my arms are around him, drawing him closer. As we lean back onto the floor, I hear the tiny clink of a wineglass going over, probably spilling wine all over the floor, but I don’t care. All I care about is Max, and how now that I have him, I’m never letting go again.

  He plants kisses all along my neck and I can’t help it—a tiny little murmur escapes my lips.

  “More of that, then?” he whispers in my ear.

  “More of everything,” I say.

  His lips trace the line of my neck and then continue downward. He lifts my shirt up to kiss my belly and then lets his hands lazily travel down my body. His touch sets my entire body on fire, and I tell him so. He doesn’t answer me. He just lets his hands stay where they are, driving me crazy, making me lose my breath.

  I can’t rip his clothes off fast enough. I’m kissing his chest, I’m kissing his stomach, and then he lifts my chin up to kiss his lips. We kiss slowly, deliberately, and it’s such a good kiss that all other thoughts are erased from my mind. It’s a kiss that leaves me thinking just one thought, one thing over and over again: Max.

  Max, Max, Max.

  And then he’s all over me, inside of me, and it feels like the first time we were ever together. Every time with Max feels like the first time. His body fits so perfectly with mine—like we were made for each other. Like we were destined to find each other.

  “I love you,” I whisper, and he whispers it back.

  As we lay on the floor afterward, I feel something wet tickling my toes. The wine. I make a mental note to clean it up later—there’s no way I’m leaving Max’s arms anytime soon. I know it will create a sticky mess, and I know that part of being a grown-up is having your own space and then actually cleaning up after yourself, but surely there’s an exception for times like this?

  “We have got to make it to the bed one of these days,” Max says.

  I smile back at him.

  “I mean, it’s not even that far away,” he says, motioning to the bed that we’re leaning up against.

  I think about how lucky I am to have Max back in my life. Why is it that you sometimes have to lose something to realize how much you needed it? I don’t know the answer to that one. Does anyone, really?

  I guess I’ll have to write a song about it.

  58 - Future Love Parad
ise

  It’s an entirely different backstage scene than the one I’m used to. For starters, Amber Fairchild’s here, and I’m happy about it. “When Will Tomorrow Be” was a huge hit for her—she recorded the whole thing acoustically, and the rest of the world responded the same way I did the day when I heard her play her guitar and sing. It’s the start of a new phase of her career, and I already got my first royalty check. It will cover my next two months’ rent, so I can focus on my music. But Chloe’s boss also called me about a possible freelance gig coming up in a month, so I’m excited to do that, too.

  Lola’s sitting next to Amber, sipping a Shirley Temple. They are both wearing leopard-print ballet flats with a hot-pink grosgrain ribbon bow on top, and I can tell they are getting along just as well as Lola always dreamed they would.

  “Are you going to ditch me for Amber as your Big Sister?” I ask Lola. Amber recently cut all of her hair off (Alan would never let her do it when he was managing her career), and Lola has just announced that she wants a short bob cut, too.

  “Totally,” Lola says. “Amber, would you be my new Big Sister?”

  “I think you can have two Big Sisters,” Amber says, smiling. “I’ll come along the next time you two meet.”

  Amber’s people hired a detective to get Alan back (and her money) and found him at the Four Seasons in Dubai, surrounded by prostitutes and a huge spread of lobsters, champagne, and cocaine. They may not have been able to extradite him back to the United States, but they were able to get back a big chunk of Amber’s money. And alert the authorities about the prostitutes and drugs. Amber doesn’t believe in divorce, so she was somehow able to sweet-talk a judge into letting her annul her seven-year marriage based on the fact that she “never really knew him at all, now, did she?”

  “Thank you, Jo,” Lola’s mom says to me, and I’m not sure what she’s thanking me for: the Amber thing, or the fact that my dad hired her as a nurse now that Barbie’s gone. But it doesn’t really matter. It makes me happy to see that good things are happening to good people. As much as I hate to admit it, my dad may be onto something with all this talk about channeling your energy into positivity, as opposed to negativity.

  I look over at Max, working on the sound and lighting for tonight on his computer, and I can’t help but smile. But then I look over at Chloe and Andrew—my best friend and my brother—cozying up at a corner booth, and I can’t help but cringe. When, exactly, will it get less vomit inducing to see my brother and best friend as an item?

  “Do you think I’ll be planning a wedding soon?” my mother asks.

  “Oh, God, I hope not,” I say, eyes still on Chloe and Andrew. “Give me a little time to get used to the idea first, would you?”

  “I meant you,” my mother says. “Max is such a nice young man.”

  “Mom!” I say. “I just turned twenty-three years old. I’m way too young to be married.”

  “By the time I was twenty-three, I already had you and your brother.”

  I have no words for this.

  The set goes perfectly. I invite Amber up on the stage and we do an impromptu duet of “When Will Tomorrow Be.” The crowd loves it. And by crowd, I mean my parents, brother, best friend, Little Sister, and her mom. But they all totally love it, just the same.

  I do a few more songs and then it’s time to close out the set. For my last song, I do something I’ve never done before—I invite my dad to come up on stage and play with me. He showboats for a few minutes (“Let me get all warmed up here,” he says as he runs his fingers along the keys, hitting each note perfectly), and then we get ready to do a duet on his favorite song, “Piano Man.”

  “I’m so glad I have my father up here with me to perform one of his all-time favorite songs,” I say. “I’d like to dedicate this next song to all those lonely hearts out there. I hope that you, too, find love like I have.”

  And then I play.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my lovely and talented agent, Mollie Glick. I can never thank you enough for taking a chance on me, all those years ago. I am so very lucky to have you in my corner.

  Big, big thanks go to my editor and the founder of Polis Books, the smart and all-around amazing Jason Pinter: I’m so incredibly excited to be working with you on this book, and my first two books as well. I’m so happy to be here at the launch of Polis Books—and I’m honored to be among the few who can say we were there when it all started.

  As always, an enormous thank-you to my family: Bernard and Sherry Janowitz, Judy Luxenberg, Sammy and Stephanie Janowitz, Jen and Lee Mattes, and Stacey and Jon Faber.

  Shawn Morris, Jennifer Moss, Danielle Schmelkin, and Tandy O’Donoghue: my best (and fastest) readers, my best friends. Sometimes you just need the friends you’ve had since you were eighteen years old.

  And to my readers. Always to my readers. Thank you.

  The biggest thank you goes out to Douglas Luxenberg. I may be a writer, but I can never find the exact words to tell you how much you mean to me. And to Ben and Davey, the lights of my life. You make it all worthwhile.

  About The Author

  A native New Yorker, Brenda Janowitz has had a flair for all things dramatic since she played the title role in her third grade production of Really Rosie. When asked by her grandmother if the experience made her want tobe an actress when she grew up, Brenda responded, “An actress? No. A writer, maybe.”

  Brenda attended Cornell University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Human Service Studies, with a Concentration in Race and Discrimination. After graduating from Cornell, she attended Hofstra Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review and won the Law Review Writing Competition. Upon graduation from Hofstra, she went to work for the law firm Kaye Scholer, LLP, where she was an associate in the Intellectual Property group, handling cases in the areas of trademark, anti-trust, Internet, and false advertising. Brenda later left Kaye Scholer to pursue a federal clerkship with the Honorable Marilyn Dolan Go, United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York.

  Brenda is the author of Jack With A Twist and Scot On The Rocks, featuring Manhattan attorney Brooke Miller, both of which are available from Polis Books. Her third novel, Recipe For A Happy Life, was published by St. Martin’s Press. Her work has also appeared in the New York Post and Publisher’s Weekly. You can find Brenda on Facebook or on Twitter at @BrendaJanowitz.

  Also by Brenda Janowitz

  Available now from Polis Books

  Manhattan attorney Brooke Miller must concoct an outrageous plan to survive her ex’s wedding and win the man of her dreams, all while keeping her dignity ever-so-slightly intact.

  “(A) rollicking debut novel...A breezy romantic comedy with plenty of laughs.”—Booklist

  When she’s pitted against her fiancé in the biggest case of her career, Brooke Miller may have to choose between the case of her life, or actually having a life.

  “Nothing less than stellar...What else can I say? Get this book, read it, and love it!”—Fresh Fiction

  Wherever you go, your next great read awaits.

  Visit http://www.PolisBooks.com for more information on terrific eBooks for every reader.

  Follow Polis Books on Twitter at @PolisBooks and on Facebook at Facebook.com/PolisBooks