“Oh. Okay.”
He got out of the car and piled the boxes from the shop on top of each other. “You want these in your office?”
“Uh, yeah. That’d be good. I’ll grab the stolen cannolis.”
A quiet laugh escaped his lips and he shook his head. It reminded me of the few times he would drop the grimacing and let himself be entertained by me and Brody.
There was something deeply satisfying about getting a reaction out of Eli. My smile quickly faded, though, when I remembered the hair tie and the silly grin on his face as he looked at his phone on the sidewalk.
Eli Buckley—my husband—had someone.
And that was totally okay.
So completely fine.
* * *
Memoirs and Martinis was held in community room three, which was already full of residents—mostly women—wearing furs and huge sunglasses.
As Eli walked in, a cheer rose through the crowd along with a handful of whistles.
“Was all that for me, the cannolis, or James Gandolfini?” he asked.
“James Gandolfini?” I asked under my breath.
Eli took the box from me and walked it over to the table that was already set with water, coffee, and martinis. “We’re a celebrity memoirbook club,” he explained. “Sometimes autobiographies or biographies, like in the case of James Gandolfini.”
I pulled some plates from the cabinet behind the table. “So the mob wife theme is an ode toThe Sopranos,I’m guessing?”
“Sometimes the ladies really commit,” he said with a slight grin. Then he waved to a man in short running shorts and a matching tank top. “Well, it’s not just ladies.”
“I’m glad to know your fan base is so diverse.”
I had so many questions. When I’d heard Eli led a book club here at Starlight Palms, I assumed it was some kind of boring nonfiction book club or a club for spy-thriller books whose characters were constantly calling Langley and slapping hysterical women to calm them down. But this felt completely unserious and like nothing the Eli I knew would actually enjoy. I took a cursory glance at the book club picks listed on the calendar handout.
I must not have hid my reaction very well, because all Eli said with a sly grin was: “Surprised?”
“Yeah, this looks like actual fun,” I told him. “I remember how much you loathe fun.”
He side-eyed me, his gaze lingering for a moment, and then shook his head as he began to place cannolis on platters.
“Well, I guess I should go. Just put the sign-up sheet in my inbox before you leave for the night.”
“Or,” he said without looking up. “You could stay.”
“I haven’t read the book,” I said.
“Here are the CliffsNotes: He starred in the greatest TV show ever and then died before his time. Besides, we don’t really talk about the book. It’s mostly an hour-long name-dropping session.”
“Sounds like my entire childhood,” I said.
He handed me a cannoli. “Take a seat. It’ll be a good way to get to know more of the residents.”
Eli ran Memoirs and Martinis like his own personal royal court. Just as he said it would, the conversation rarely stuck to the topic and often strayed into rumor and gossip territory. Eli was seemingly the onlyperson who could redirect the conversation—and had to a handful of times, including when a woman named Melinda gave an eight-minute monologue about auditioning forThe Sopranos,being offered the role of someone’s mother, but ultimately turning it down to narrate a documentary that Maggie Smith had backed out of. That wasn’t the part that Eli interrupted, though. It was when Doreen called Melinda a lying tart. According to Doreen, she was at the callback for that same role and Melinda had been cut in round one.
It was truly the most entertaining book club I’d ever been to, except for the time my mom got her nurses to read an opossum-shifter romance with her during an extended hospital stay.
As book club ended, Eli announced, “Next month, we’re reading the Leah Remini book, so let’s think of what desserts I can bring for that one.”
