Happily Ever Madder : Misadventures of a Mad Fat Girl (9781101607107) Read online

  Praise for

  Diary of a Mad Fat Girl

  “Meet Graciela ‘Ace’ Jones, a wildcat Southern version of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum … [a] hilarious debut novel.”

  —Library Journal

  “Diary of a Mad Fat Girl is bawdy, sexy, Southern-fried fun. McAfee makes a powerhouse debut that readers will love.”

  —Valerie Frankel, author of It’s Hard Not to Hate You

  “Fresh and funny. Ace Jones is a hoot! This is what Sex and the City might have been if Carrie and friends were looking for love in Bugtussle, Mississippi, instead of Manhattan.”

  —Wendy Wax, author of Ten Beach Road

  “Ace Jones is my kind of girl: Her outsize appetite for life, plus a dangerously low tolerance for losers, get her into one impossible fix after another. In addition to involving a delightfully madcap crew of friends and acquaintances in her quest for justice, Ace is aided, abetted, and occasionally bedded by some delicious Southern gentlemen. Ace prevails with humor, heart, and a speed-dial relationship with the pizza guy.”

  —Sophie Littlefield, award-winning author of A Bad Day for Scandal

  “Southern-fried Janet Evanovich.”

  —Booklist

  “Stephanie McAfee, in creating Ace Jones, has written a character that will grab you by the shirtfront and take you with her on her ride, and oh, what a wild ride it is. Diary of a Mad Fat Girl is pure fun.”

  —Rachael Herron, author of Wishes & Stitches

  Also by Stephanie McAfee

  Diary of a Mad Fat Girl

  HAPPILY

  EVER MADDER

  Misadventures of a Mad Fat Girl

  Stephanie McAfee

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2. Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632 New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Stephanie McAfee, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  McAfee, Stephanie.

  Happily ever madder: misadventures of a mad fat girl /Stephanie McAfee.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60710-7

  1. Overweight women—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Florida—Fiction. 4. Mississippi—

  Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.C2635H37 2012

  813’.6—dc23 2012023780

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  To Brandon

  Your patience knows no bounds.

  Contents

  Praise for Diary of a Mad Fat Girl

  Also by Stephanie McAfee

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Acknowledgments

  About the author

  1

  I didn’t think I’d be this nervous. I mean, I knew from the very beginning that this night was going to be stressful, but I didn’t expect it to feel like an all-out near-death experience.

  I turn away from the toilet and pick up the bottle. I don’t even like champagne. I like beer. And right now I need a beer worse than I ever have, but champagne is all I’ve got to get me through this, so I turn the bottle toward the ceiling and hammer down.

  I remind myself that this is what I’ve always wanted. It’s everything I’ve always wanted, so I don’t understand why it doesn’t feel anything like I always thought it would. Maybe because I never thought this moment would actually arrive. But it’s here. Right now. I’m about to walk out in front of a rather large crowd of people and bare my soul for their casual perusal.

  Someone knocks and tries to open the door.

  “Ace! What are you doing? Come on! Everyone is waiting!” A pause. “Have you got the runs? Please tell me you don’t have the runs!”

  “I don’t have the damn runs, Lilly!” I shout at my best friend of going on twenty years. “Jeez, just give me a minute.”

  “You don’t have a minute! You were supposed to be out there ten minutes ago, so come on!”

  “What am I supposed to say to all those people?”

  “I don’t know.” She pauses, then adds, “I hate to be the one to point this out, but maybe you should’ve thought about that already?”

  “I did.”

  “Great—now get out here and say something before these people start leaving!”

  I reach over and unlock the door. Lilly comes in and starts fussing with m
y hair.

  “Here,” she says, handing me a tube of lip gloss. She looks at the champagne bottle in my hand. “Are you drunk?”

  “Unfortunately, I am not.”

  She takes the bottle out of my hand and sticks it under the sink.

  “This is your big night, Ace Jones,” she says, smiling. “Get out there and give ’em the old razzle-dazzle.”

  “More like frazzle-dazzle, Lilly. I’m scared shitless. What if everyone hates everything they see? What if they think it’s all complete and total garbage?”

  “Ace, if they think that, then they’re idiots, and no one cares what idiots think,” she says, taking my hand. “C’mon, now. You’ve waited your whole life for this.”

  I follow her out of the bathroom, through my brand-new office, where move-in junk is still scattered everywhere, and out into the wide-open space of the gallery, my gallery, where clusters of people are drinking champagne and looking at paintings. My paintings.

  “And here she is, folks,” a slick-haired fellow says into a cordless microphone. “The star of tonight’s show, Miss Graciela Jones!”

  Everyone claps and I smile and wave. I take the microphone from his overtanned hand, gather all my courage, and pray I don’t hurl.

  “Hello, everyone,” I say and realize I’ve got the microphone too close to my mouth. “Thank you all so much for coming out tonight. Welcome to Mermaids of Pelican Cove.”

  I scan the sea of unfamiliar faces, then home in on my pals, who are congregated in the far left corner of the gallery. I see Lilly take a seat on the sofa in between her luscious lover boy, Dax Dorsett, and our mutual BFF, Chloe Stacks. Sitting directly across from Chloe is her new boyfriend, J. J. Jackson, and perched two cushions down is Ethan Allen Harwood, who is chatting it up with his best friend and my fiancé, Mason McKenzie. Mason is sitting on a rectangular ottoman, and I’d give anything to be sitting over there next to him instead of standing up here about to lose my mind. He looks at me and smiles. I feel a little better, but not much.

  I look back at the crowd, take a deep breath, and attempt to parlay the speech I spent the past three weeks composing. Instead of delivering the articulate presentation I had planned, however, I sputter random words and phrases in a most disorderly fashion, then get really hot and start feeling like I might pass out. I decide to start thanking people.

  “I’d like to thank my fiancé, Mason McKenzie, and all of my old friends who came down to Pelican Cove, Florida, from my hometown of Bugtussle, Mississippi. Thanks, y’all.” I look at them and nod. “And I’d like to thank all the new friends that I make to meet tonight. I’m sorry, I mean, hope to make—I mean, meet tonight.” I look at Lilly, and she looks nervous but flashes me a big smile, so I continue. “Thank you, Mason, for making all of my dreams come true, and thank you, Lilly, for being my BFF since we stopped hating each other the year after sixth grade. And thank you, Chloe, who’s been my other BFF since we met at Mississippi State and me and Lilly moved in with her even though we thought she was a little bit weird.” Then I get too close to the microphone again and mumble, “At first.” I look at Chloe, and her big brown eyes are round like saucers.

  I shift my gaze back to the crowd and see that more than a few people look like their underwear just started squeezing them in all the wrong places. My brain feels like it’s swelling up inside my skull and I wish I hadn’t drunk all that champagne. I mop the sweat off my forehead and try to remember what I’d planned to say. I don’t think I meant to thank my friends individually, but since I mentioned a few, I decide to mention the others because I don’t want anyone to think that I don’t appreciate their driving six hours down here to watch me make a fool of myself in front of all these people I don’t know.

  “Thanks to Sherriff J. J. Jackson and Deputy Dax Dorsett, who came down with their lady friends, Chloe and Lilly, to see, uh, me and all this.” I wave my arm around in a big circle and try to smile. “I don’t know who is keeping criminals off the street in Bugtussle tonight, but since I moved out of town, I guess the crime rate has gone down considerably.” I snigger and look at Lilly, who is slicing her hand across her throat. I hear a rumble in the crowd and panic. “And, finally, thanks to Ethan Allen Harwood, my best guy friend in the whole wide world and Mason’s best friend in the whole wide world.” I look at Ethan Allen, who is frozen like a statue. “We love you like a brother, Ethan Allen, so I guess it’s a good thing that me and you never hooked up, because that would’ve been almost like incest.”

  The crowd is quiet now and staring at me like I have an alien probe sticking out of my ass. Despite my best effort not to, I start laughing hysterically. I look at Mason, who gives me a sweet “you’re so pitiful” smile. He starts clapping, and others do the same. I tug at the hem of my not-so-little black dress because all of that slimming fabric has started to creep. I look around and try to remember what I just said to all these people, but I can’t. “Thank you all for coming out,” I say a bit too loud. “Please excuse my nervousness. Lucky for me, you didn’t come to hear me speak, thank goodness—you came to see my work, so if we could please just move along to that part, well, that would be great.”

  I look at the tuxedo-clad slickster, who smiles at me with genuine sympathy. I verbalize my gratitude one more time and then give the microphone back to him. He gives a short and far more graceful spiel, and everyone claps and starts looking comfortable again. I stand there beside him and smile, wondering if the spotlight glaring into my face could scorch my eyeballs and cause me to go blind. I take a little bow, then walk slowly away from the brutal shaft of light, trying to project a sense of confidence that I most certainly do not feel.

  Shit. No wonder van Gogh cut off his own ear.

  I make a beeline for my pals.

  2

  “Oh. Wow. That was some speech,” Lilly says, pressing her lips together like she does when she’s trying not to laugh.

  “I don’t even remember what I said,” I tell her. “That was awful!”

  “It was pretty awful,” Lilly agrees.

  “I meant having to stand up there like that.”

  “I meant your speech,” Lilly says, providing everyone, including herself, with the opportunity to laugh off the tension.

  Ethan Allen hands me a champagne glass and I take a big swig and almost choke. I don’t know what in the world is in that glass, but it ain’t champagne. Ethan Allen smiles at my reaction.

  “Moonshine,” he says. “Thought it might help your nerves.”

  “Ethan Allen Harwood!” Lilly says, reaching for the glass. “She needs to be calm”—I take one more swig before she takes the glass out of my hand—“not pissant drunk! We don’t need her dancing on the balcony in her bra and panties.”

  “Has that happened before?” Dax Dorsett asks, and I can’t tell if he’s worried or interested.

  “Yes,” Lilly says. “As a matter of fact, it has.”

  Mason smiles at Ethan Allen. “Leave me a jug of that, would you?”

  “No problem, buddy.”

  Lilly hands me another glass.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Water,” she says. “Now, let’s go mingle with your potential clientele before they leave here thinking you’re a total nutcase.” She takes my hand and leads me into the crowd.

  After Lilly and I meet and greet what seems like six hundred thousand people, I sneak off while she isn’t looking and have a seat on one of the benches. I’m wondering how improper it would be to shed my heels and walk around barefoot when I hear a commotion at the front door.

  I look up to see Gloria Peacock, one of my very favorite people from Bugtussle, and her sophisticated senior citizen friends making a grand and glorious entrance. I forget the foot pain and rush over to welcome them.

  “Graciela,” Gloria Peacock says, giving me a delicate little-old-lady hug, “How wonderful to see you!” She looks around the place. “Magnificent!” she says, smiling. “It’s positively magnificent!”

 
; “I’m so happy y’all could make it,” I say and exchange hugs with the other three ladies.

  “Well,” Daisy McClellan says, straightening her wide-brimmed, feathered hat. “We would’ve been here on time if Birdie hadn’t had that altercation with the police officer who pulled us over for driving the wrong way down a one-way street!”

  “Daisy!” Birdie Ross snaps. “I was going where that varmint told me to go!”

  “Well, I told you that I knew exactly where this place was, Birdie. And it’s a Garmin, not a varmint.” Daisy rolls her eyes. “That GPS is going to get you killed!”

  “Or thrown in jail,” Gloria’s friend Temple Williams adds.

  “Trust me, ladies,” I say, thankful they missed my babbling fool of a speech, “your timing couldn’t be better!”

  Chloe appears with a tray of long-stemmed glasses. “Hello, darling ladies,” she says sweetly. “Could I interest anyone in some champagne?”

  “Good holy mother of ginger snaps, yes!” Birdie exclaims, taking two glasses.

  I escort Gloria, Daisy, Birdie, and Temple around the gallery, and they ooh and aah over my work to the point I start feeling giddy like I always imagined I would back when having my own art gallery was just a big, fancy dream. We wind through the gallery and back around to where Mason and the others are camped out, and since my psycho nerves are under control, I decide to make a solo venture into the crowd.

  Just as I’m getting into my conversational groove, I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to face a stout woman who looks to be in her late fifties or early sixties and would best be described as handsome rather than pretty. Her grass green dress is sparkly to the point of being obnoxious and she’s wearing a shimmery gold scarf with a gigantic rhinestone brooch shaped like, of all things, a hammer.