Page 51 of Bad Luck Club

She’d chosen it with him in mind, although she hadn’t picked a challenge yet. She strongly suspected he wouldn’t want to come back, that he might not want to see her again either, but she couldn’t let herself believe it. It was too painful to consider, much more painful than this morning’s scene with Dan, although she still felt guilty for her role in his possible infidelity. So instead she thought about possible challenges for Lee. So many came to mind: Lee bowling, Lee dancing, Lee trying a flight of Buchanan beers. Lee posing for a painting (her mind had him nude). Lee going out on a date.

But her mind bucked against that last possibility in a way that told her she was in trouble.

Because if he went out on a date, she wanted it to be with her, and she was no less messed up than she’d been yesterday. Same for him. Actually, it felt like they weremoremessed up, at least with each other.

“Oh, this is rife with possibilities,” Bear said, delighted.

“Damn. I was hoping mine would get chosen this week,” Nicole said, playing with the hoop in her nose. “I went with the Hawaiian theme.”

“Now look who’s not taking the process seriously,” Augusta snapped, and everyone else groaned in tandem.

“What can I say?” Nicole said with a grin at Dee. “Bear gave me the idea, and Dee keeps talking about those fake cruises.”

“What was yours, Auggie?” Bear asked.

“Communication.”

Harry laughed, actually laughed, until Augusta looked at him, and then he resembled a turtle retreating into its shell…and resenting the hell out of it.

Blue glanced at Lee.

“What was yours?” she asked quietly.

“Wouldn’t it be against the rules to tell?”

It wouldn’t, but she didn’t push him. He already felt so distant from her. She didn’t want to push him any further over the edge. Because even if he thought they were all crazy, or losers, she still hoped the club might help him. Despite the way things were going in her life—with her mom and the whole Dan debacle—she knew it had helped her.

The ride home was silent—Lee claimed he had a headache and didn’t feel like talking—and when she dropped him off, he didn’t hug her or touch her arm or tell her he’d call or text. She asked him what was wrong, but he just shook his head and got out of the car. He went through the door without looking back.

She told herself he just needed time, that they’d given him a lot to work through and chew on, but she worried it was the last she’d see of him. That the connection between them had been severed because of her own foolishness. She would’ve kept quiet about her challenge earlier if she hadn’t already accrued three strikes. Maybe Bear would have let it slide, but maybe not.

Besides, she and Lee had agreed on radical honesty, hadn’t they? There was nothing wrong with what she’d done. Nothing wrong with wanting to help him through a hard spell because she quite simplylikedhim. A lot more than she was supposed to, actually.

Wasn’t he the one who wasn’t being honest?

Because everything wasn’t okay, like Lee had said in the car before making the headache excuse.

Blue was so consumed with her thoughts, her worries, that she didn’t really consider what her own challenge from Bear might be. She didn’t think of it once when she drove home and fed Buford. Or when she crocheted, paying only partial attention to a Lifetime movie recommended by her friends on their last girls’ night. Or when she called her mom and listened to the phone ringing endlessly, her worry ratcheting up with each unanswered ring. Or when she fielded texts from Adalia, who desperately wanted to know how it had gone (not well). Or when she answered a Facebook message from her little sister, who had a doomed crush on a boy who was in a band and had three tattoos (that she could see), and she admitted to having a doomed crush of her own. No, she didn’t think of it until her phone buzzed beside her on the nightstand beside her bed.

Your challenge, Blueberry, should you choose to accept it: Go on a date with someone you actually like. No checklists. No one named Dan. Look for a tan line on the ring finger this time. Or an indentation. Everyone who wears a wedding ring has one.

Chapter Fifteen

Lee was in an extremely foul mood, and that was saying something given the fact he’d spent most of the last month in a foul mood.

After Blue dropped him off at his house, he went to work out, then headed to the brewery. The last thing he wanted was for Adalia to come home and start asking questions about that disaster they’d taken the liberty to call a support group. Going to the meeting should have made him feel better, not like he’d taken a bath in sewage water, but it had been a disaster since that moment in the driveway with Blue…made worse by how amazing he’d felt before he’d walked through the door.

He allowed himself to feel disappointment that the group hadn’t worked out. Blue’s club was filled with the strangest assortment of people he’d ever met, and he’d met plenty of eccentric people in New York. They couldn’t even help themselves, let alone him.

He didn’t allow himself to feel disappointed over Blue. He should never have kissed her. That was on him. As far as her challenge went…she had been sent on a mission to bring in a new recruit, and he was it. Time and place. Nothing more. Their bonding on her sofa? All part of her sales pitch.

Only it hadn’t felt like a sales pitch at all. She was either really good or it had been genuine, and either possibility was too painful to dwell on.

But he was good at sales too, and maybe his father had been right about one thing. Backbone and hard work were the cure for all of a person’s ills. Not more whining and wallowing, which admittedly he’d allowed himself to indulge in over the past month. But no more. If he wanted to feel better, he needed to do what he’d always done—bury the pain and uneasiness in work. And sure, selling Buchanan beer was not his ideal job, but he would take the hand he’d been dealt and become the best damn beer salesperson Asheville had ever seen.

So here he was at seven o’clock on a Sunday night, making a record of all the orders shipping had fulfilled since Georgie and Jack had taken over the brewery last summer and, more importantly, the orders before Beau had died. It was far easier to win back former clients than to cold-call new ones. He’d focus on wider outreach later.

It was after midnight by the time he’d finished his spreadsheet, allowing him to compare the brewery’s most valuable customers before and after the takeover. He was dismayed to see the sharp contrast. Then he spent another hour pulling up a map and pinning all the locations, devising a game plan for the next two weeks. He’d be on the road more than he would be in Asheville. He’d have to ask Georgie for a small allowance to stay in motels when he was out on the coast, but if he could reclaim some of his sales magic, he’d be able to drum up enough business to reimburse the expenses and, hopefully, much more. He didn’t fall into bed until nearly three a.m., but he set his alarm for seven. Before he let sleep pull him under, he sent a text, hoping the recipient would find it when she woke up and it wouldn’t disturb her sleep.

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