The Theory of Happily Ever After Read online

  But I’ve lost all spirit to go into battle. What does it matter if I can prove him wrong? He’s not wrong. About me, anyway.

  “Sam,” his sister chastises. “You’ve got three gorgeous women in front of you and that’s what you’re going to go with? A rant on smart women?” She lets out an extended sigh. “I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Jules Jensen from New York, and this is my brother. He’s from Silicon Valley in case you couldn’t tell.” Jules rolls her eyes. “I can assure you he doesn’t believe anything he’s spewing. He’s just angry that I made him take a vacation. Give him a few days. He’s quite charming, actually.”

  “Really?” Kathleen raises her eyebrows, then she whispers in my ear, “I think she means give him a few days and lots and lots of alcohol.”

  For me, the words of proof won’t come. I could cite any of the studies that show smart people are happier because of good health and a lack of concern over basic needs. However, I say nothing because Sam’s words sting like a jellyfish. Maybe I am incapable of true happiness, and numbing myself with the romance channel is as close as it gets.

  There’s little doubt that Jake’s soaring, Lycra-wearing Tinkerbell sprinkled pixie dust in her wake and left him feeling as if he too could fly, while a scientific downer like me spread nothing but Spock-like facts and despair—covering a room with a dark, dingy feeling similar to volcanic ash.

  This gorgeous stranger with his spellbinding gaze is onto me and my “junk science.” If he gets it, how much more the scientific community? I should be at home, checking to see if Taco Bell is hiring. Yo quiero Taco Bell.

  I grab Kathleen by the hand. “This trip has disaster written all over it.”

  Naturally, she has no mercy. “Since when are you a ball of nerves who acts on her feelings? That’s Haley’s MO. You’re one of the most analytical people I know, and you’re here on this cruise for a reason! Think about it and stop letting Jake or this random dude get into your head! You’ve been utterly reprogrammed. It’s like you’ve been stuck in a cult.”

  My body shudders unconsciously. Kathleen is right. She has to be. Happiness is ahead of me, not behind me. Stepping out of my misery is something only I can do. If for no other reason than to prove to men like Jake and Sam that they’re wrong about women like me. I’m anxious to get to my room and find every study on record that proves Sam’s theory about intelligent women is absolute hogwash.

  “Dr. Maguire?” A young woman with a musical accent reads off a clipboard. “You and your entourage will be staying on the Luxe promenade deck. We have you and your party for the early dinner seating, is that correct?”

  I stare at her, blinking rapidly. How would I know? I’m clearly a passenger in my own life at this point.

  Sam’s eyes plead with me, as if he needs an answer, but I force my view to the wildly decorated blue carpet rather than be caught off guard again. This is not my battle.

  The gal with the lilting voice is still speaking in her beautiful, singsong way. “Since it’s a singles’ cruise, most tables are mingling and changing every night. Your party requested to stay at the same table, is that correct?”

  That probably sounded like a good idea at the time, but no doubt with my luck, Quasimodo and his brothers will be seated at our table and looking for love.

  “You can always eat in any of the ship’s restaurants if the early seating doesn’t work for you on a particular night. Someone will meet you at your stateroom one hour before your speaking engagement and bring you to the proper room. One last thing—the final night is the ‘New Year, New You’ gala. It’s a formal event, and we encourage all passengers to find a date for the ball.”

  I stare openmouthed. “Seriously? I have to relive my prom rejection all over again?”

  “Aren’t you funny,” she says. “Is there anything else we can help you with?”

  I shake my head and take one last look behind me toward the handsome Sam Wellington, who I thought had disappeared. But he stands behind me in all of his arrogant glory. Like me, he probably looks really great on paper and has a résumé that would make Oprah swoon. In essence, Sam Wellington has Jake Stone written all over him. Like the rest of the men in my history, he’s probably searching for someone bubbly who will cheer him on for simple acts of heroism, like putting the toilet seat down.

  I am not that woman.

  4

  Positive emotions are the key to resilience. Spend time around upbeat people.

  The Science of Bliss by Dr. Margaret K. Maguire

  OUR SUITE IS LUXURIOUS AND EXPANSIVE. Taupe walls, a swirly-textured beige carpet, and an L-shaped sofa that resembles a gently roasted marshmallow make the suite cozier than my own apartment. There’s a shiny wooden console with a television set separating the living space from the king-size bed and the two smaller bedrooms. While this suite must be twice the size of my apartment, after I’ve been holed up in my own space for so long, the walls feel as if they’re closing in on me and I must escape. I grab my e-reader from my laptop bag.

  “I’m going to discover the ship,” I tell my friends.

  Translation: I’m going to discover a tacky, lighthearted beach read and forget why I’m on this floating barge of desperate fools. I know my friends mean well, but a singles’ cruise? The last thing I want to be reminded of is my relationship status. I’m not ready to admit to being single yet, much less tag my Facebook picture with “It’s complicated.” It makes it all too real that I can’t live up to my parents’ expectations for a successful life.

  “We’ll go with you,” Kathleen says, but one look at my darkened brow and she backs off.

  “I’m fine, Kathleen. I’m not going to jump ship. I simply need time to prepare my talk and get into my head. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to be Dr. Margaret K. Maguire.”

  Kathleen tries to understand my loss, but she has no desire to get married in this lifetime, and she certainly can’t understand my grieving over the loss of Jake. She never liked him. And after her parents’ tumultuous divorce, her dad remarried, and the new wife is about to give birth to Kathleen’s little brother or sister. Nothing like a thirty-year age gap to forge the bond of siblings. Kathleen now devotes herself to eating the perfect diet and shaping other people’s lives into a structured place of order. She loves a schedule and a hamburger bun that tastes like sawdust. Some part of her believes if she sticks to a proper order of doing things—God’s way, she would most likely say—she won’t fall victim to her father’s weak-willed nature. Mistakes were made, she’d say. Lord forbid mistakes be made!

  In contrast to Kathleen’s drama-laced parents, my parents are boring, pseudo–happily married tenured professors at UCLA—who constantly remind me how far behind their schedule I am. Conversations tend to fall into depressing comparisons to their own accomplishments.

  “I was married for six years and had you by the age of thirty-one.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “The average age for tenure for scientists is younger, Margaret. Most scientists have it by your age. Perhaps you should change your field of study.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “I suppose it would help if I actually wanted tenure,” I say aloud, and my friends stare at me as if I’ve lost it.

  “What?” Haley asks.

  “Nothing.”

  While Kathleen tries to convince the world they need to be in better shape and I analyze why certain people are happy, Haley collects monthly marriage proposals like Victorian dance cards. I suppose you could say that she has to beat them off with a stick. Men generally take one look at her and believe they’ve met their soul mate, but Haley isn’t interested in a husband just yet. She believes the right one will come along the day and moment she’s ready—and the truth is, she’s probably right. She looks in a guy’s direction and he’s instantly smitten. If I truly wanted romance in my life, I’d study Haley.

  Meanwhile, Jake was the first and only man who pursued me. The only one to ask me for my hand in marriage. Maybe
I got flustered and worried another offer wouldn’t come along, but I don’t think that was it. I think I genuinely loved a man who was only pretending to love me. What can I say? He was a good actor and being in love felt amazing. I finally had my parents’ approval.

  “We thought it would never happen!” my mom had squealed. My mother is not the squealing type.

  “I didn’t even have to pay this guy. Remember that with her prom date, Carol?” My dad laughed and pumped Jake’s hand, as if they were in collusion while signing over the pink slip on me.

  Even my parents thought Jake was too good for me. And I didn’t go to prom. My dad gave my homecoming date gas money—maybe he slipped him more that I didn’t know about. Some questions are better left unasked. I know the pain behind my parents’ fears for my future, but it didn’t make things easier.

  “You’re going to find love,” Kathleen says as I grab the doorknob.

  I should mention that Kathleen believes she has the slightest gift of prophecy. Randomly she says things out loud with this ethereal, low voice. They’re usually things you want to believe, so you go with it. In the moment, you let her believe she’s gifted. However, Kathleen never warned me about Jake, so her prophetess status is questionable at best.

  “Be nice to everyone,” Haley warns as I open the door to our cabin. “Your new publisher is on board this ship and I have no idea who it is.”

  “How is that possible?” I ask. “They’ve hired a new publisher. I would think that’s public-domain information—you know, for stockholders.”

  “Apparently it’s an interim thing, hiring from within. They have to prove themselves before the announcement is public, so it appears that your book is going to be crucial to the new publisher’s success.”

  “Peachy.”

  “I must admit, I wondered if it was that tall guy who said smart women can’t be happy. Maybe it was a test. You know, to see if you could defend your work?”

  “That guy is not for you, Haley,” Kathleen says in her ominous prophetess voice. “I saw the way you stared at him. I’m going to say no to that right here, right now.”

  “Oh, Kathleen, you don’t know everything.”

  “I’ll be nice to everyone,” I grumble as I escape into the hall.

  Haley calls after me, “Don’t forget. We have that icebreaker before dinner!” She hands me an itinerary and I shove it into my bag.

  “I won’t forget.” I snake my way through the labyrinth of claustrophobic hallways to elegant corridors with twinkle bulbs and bronze rails. Our suite overlooks an indoor mall, which resembles an old-time downtown city block from a bygone era. It’s ridiculous, but who am I to judge? I’ve been living in stained sweatpants for two months.

  I finally reach an outdoor exit and push against the wind to reveal gray, cold skies typical of a blustery January afternoon. I’m on the exclusive concierge-level deck, and it’s empty except for a small bar tucked away against the wind. The city of Galveston is below, and I can see the snaking traffic with passengers still making their way toward the ship. Haley knew what she was doing having us board early.

  I climb onto one of the barstools when a commanding voice startles me from my perch. “We’re closed.”

  The slippery wood stool seems to have spouted oil and ejects me with a thud. The cold teak floor greets my backside, and air escapes my lungs from the impact. A strikingly handsome face stares down at me from over the bar. It’s one of those awful moments in which you need a friend beside you to laugh it off. My isolated ways have made me too bold—I wasn’t ready to surface in society alone. I bounce from the floor as if attached to a mighty rubber band.

  The bartender has dark, spiked hair and rounded, inflated muscles emerging from a blue tank top with the ship’s name emblazoned across it. “Did you just fall off that stool?” he asks me, leaning on the shiny bar to emphasize his bulging bicep. “The bar isn’t even open.”

  “I didn’t think anyone was here. You startled me. I thought I’d have the place to myself.”

  He laughs in an “I feel you” way, and his blue eyes light from within. He’s like every handsome hero I’ve ever loved rolled into one amazing, buff, clean-cut, clean-shaven package—except he’s missing the stray dog. I check the back of the bar to see if it’s there, but nope. No canine wingman. There is an air of danger about him, a little edge not normally seen in my films. He’s a bartender, after all. Considering I don’t drink and my mother would never approve of his vocation, it’s as good as a face tattoo or a motorcycle in my world.

  I force myself to keep from staring. He puts out a hand and I reach for it. The romance fantasy will always be my undoing. In my overly analytical world, it’s my one weakness.

  “Brent Spoils,” he says, and I feel the electricity coming off him. “You’re famous.” He points to yet another sign featuring my overly optimistic author picture.

  “Oh my goodness, did they mass-produce that photo?” I settle onto the stool. “I’ve written a book. I’m here to talk about it.”

  “Cool. You wrote a book, huh?”

  I sit up a little straighter and try to capture some of the joy that I felt when I first learned I’d be published. “I did.”

  “So you’re smart too. You don’t often get the full package—smart and beautiful.”

  It’s a pickup line, probably one he’s used successfully a thousand times, but I hardly care. I’m in no place to be particular about false compliments. Why I picked today to go au naturel with my makeup confounds me, but I suppose I did because it’s been a few months since I didn’t go au naturel.

  The wattage of his smile increases. “I can’t open the bar until we set sail. You can go inside if you need a drink, but I hope you’ll stay out here and visit.”

  “Can I have a sparkling water? Or is that contraband too?”

  He looks around like a secret agent. “For you, anything.” He grins. “Seems like you may need something stronger. Recent breakup?”

  My face starts to pucker, and before I can answer, he cups his hand on mine. “Don’t worry. It’s not obvious. I’m a professional. No one sees more brokenhearted people than a therapist or a bartender. In fact, some would say we’re one and the same.”

  I grab my e-reader, which now has a cracked screen. “It’s broken,” I say. I knew I wasn’t ready to face the world. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m going to go back to my stateroom.”

  “Wait a minute,” he says, pressing his hand to mine again. “I can’t let a beautiful woman go when she’s got the secret to happiness. Isn’t that what your book says? The Science of Bliss? That’s some title, Dr. Margaret K. Maguire,” he says, reading the sign.

  “Call me Maggie, and heck if I know what happiness is. I thought it was gelato and sappy movies, but my friends informed me that I was wrong.” I look up at his handsome face and can’t even fake it. “Do I look happy to you?”

  He shakes his head. “Not particularly. You look fresh though, and after a breakup, trust me, that’s no easy task. I think you should cut yourself a break. No one’s happy all the time—unless they’re on something.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls who mope at your bar.”

  “Not too many women moping at this bar. People are on vacation. They’re happy to be away from the office.”

  I shrug. Proof that everyone inherently has this mystical emotion called happiness that I’ve been trying to pin down for years.

  Brent mystifies me. Alcohol is so foreign in my life, and he seems so very normal for being a bartender. That would probably sound ignorant if I said it out loud, but my parents simply never associated with people who drank, and without acknowledging that way of life, I instinctively inherited it.

  “Everyone’s had their heart broken, Maggie.” He says my name softly and with intimacy. Brent really has a magical way about him. It’s obvious he says these lines to women all the time, but he’s so handsome that I’m still giggly and stupid, wanting to believe I’m special.


  “So who broke your heart?” I ask him to get the attention off myself.

  “My former fiancée. Whitney Gaspar.”

  “That’s a terrible last name. It sounds like a balloon expelling air or something.”

  “Right?” He laughs. “It is a terrible name, but I figured I could rescue her from that. Thought I’d be her hero. She’d be Whitney Spoils and I’d spoil her rotten.”

  “You weren’t her hero?”

  “We were young. I met her in college.” He wipes the counter in front of me and places a Perrier on the bar. “She was stunning, full of life, and studying psychology.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why do you say that? Aren’t you some kind of psychology expert?”

  “My dad wouldn’t let me study psychology. He said only crazy girls did that, in his opinion as a college professor. Granted, I was still crazy enough. I just don’t have the degree to go with the personality.”

  “Well, she was crazy. That, and she didn’t want to marry a restaurateur. Thought she could do better with a hedge fund manager.” He wiped the top of a plastic wine glass. “The truth is, she probably could. We both would have been miserable if she hadn’t broken it off. That’s why, Dr. Maguire, you need to count your blessings. Sometimes, getting your heart broken is the best thing that can happen to you.”

  “A restaurateur? This isn’t your regular job?”

  “Nah. I own a restaurant in Texas. I do this once a year to get away. Tomorrow I’ll teach a mixology class, work here for a few shifts, and then I can do whatever I please, all expenses paid. Having a purpose on board somehow makes it easier to book a vacation.”

  “Ah, another workaholic.”

  “Maybe.”

  I laugh in a flirtatious way that makes me sound ridiculous. Women like me can’t get away with the whole coquettish giggle. It sounds like a goose honk coming out of a baby chick.

  When I turn in my barstool, I spy Sam Wellington, the man from the foyer, sitting in a lounge chair beside a glass wall overlooking Galveston. We lock eyes before I quickly turn back to Brent. Maybe Haley is right. Maybe Sam is my new publisher.