Wallflower In Bloom Read online

  PRAISE FOR CLAIRE COOK

  “The exuberant and charming Claire Cook is one of the sassiest and funniest creators of contemporary women’s fiction.”

  —THE TIMES-PICAYUNE

  “Reading Claire Cook might be the most fun you have all summer.”

  —ELIN HILDERBRAND

  “Charming, engagingly quirky, and full of fun, Claire Cook just gets it.”

  —MEG CABOT

  “A master in creating funny, warm, relatable characters you root for from the very first page.”

  —ALLISON WINN SCOTCH

  “Inimitably warm and witty . . . Tender, touching, and terribly, terribly funny!”

  —MARY KAY ANDREWS

  “Readers will hope that Claire Cook will be telling breezy summer stories from the South Shore of Massachusetts for seasons to come.”

  —THE WASHINGTON POST

  FROM THE ACCLAIMED BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MUST LOVE DOGS COMES A WINNING AND WITTY NEW NOVEL ABOUT A WOMAN WHO EMERGES FROM THE SHADOW OF HER OVERBEARING FAMILY AND FINDS HERSELF “DANCING WITH THE STARS.”

  DEIRDRE GRIFFIN has a great life; it’s just not her own. She’s the around-the-clock personal assistant to her charismatic, high-maintenance, New Age guru brother, Tag. As the family wallflower, her only worth seems to be as gatekeeper to Tag at his New England seaside compound.

  Then Deirdre’s sometime boyfriend informs her that he is marrying another woman, who just happens to be having the baby he told Deirdre he never wanted. While drowning her sorrows in Tag’s expensive vodka, Deirdre decides to use his massive online following to get herself voted on as a last-minute Dancing with the Stars replacement. It’ll get her back in shape, mentally and physically. It might even get her a life of her own. Deirdre’s fifteen minutes of fame have begun.

  Irresistible and offbeat, Wallflower in Bloom is an original and deeply satisfying story of having the courage to take a leap into the spotlight, no matter where you land.

  CLAIRE COOK wrote her first novel in her minivan when she was forty-five. At fifty, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the adaptation of her second novel, Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. She is the bestselling author of eight other novels and divides her time between the suburbs of Atlanta and Boston.

  www.ClaireCook.com

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  • THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS •

  JACKET DESIGN BY REGINA STARACE

  JACKET PHOTOGRAPH © GETTY IMAGES

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

  ALSO BY CLAIRE COOK

  Best Staged Plans

  Seven Year Switch

  The Wildwater Walking Club

  Summer Blowout

  Life’s a Beach

  Multiple Choice

  Must Love Dogs

  Ready to Fall

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  Touchstone

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

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

  Copyright © 2012 by Claire Cook

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Touchstone hardcover edition June 2012

  TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Renata Di Biase

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cook, Claire, 1955–

  Wallflower in bloom: a novel / Claire Cook.

  p. cm.

  “A Touchstone Book.”

  1. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 2. Reality television programs—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3553. O55317W35 2012

  813′54—dc23

  2011044716

  ISBN 978-1-4516-7276-3

  ISBN 978-1-4516-7278-7 (ebook)

  For late bloomers everywhere.

  CONTENTS

  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

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  wallflower

  in bloom

  Who will buy the cow if you give away the milk for free, yet once you get a taste of the milk, who can resist coming back to the cow?

  My brother was dazzling, as usual. “Do. You. Have. Passion?” he roared. His white teeth gleamed. His elegant hands beckoned. His bedroom eyes twinkled. The sold-out mostly female audience drooled.

  My brother’s eyes were a big part of his It Thing. You couldn’t look away. They were blue. Endless blue. Deep, glittery blue, like the ocean when the setting sun hits it just the right way.

  Of course, luck of the gene pool and all that, my own eyes were wallflower brown.

  I watched my famous brother scan the room, somehow appearing to make contact with each and every set of seeking eyes in the audience. “The Ancient Greeks asked only one question at a person’s funeral: Did. He. Or she. Have. Passion?”

  When he lifted his palms to the heavens, his crisp white tunic exposed just the right amount of muscular forearm. “Find yours. See it clearly in your mind’s eye. Design the life your passion desires. And remember, passion doesn’t sleep. It is always there, waiting for you.”

  Everywhere I looked, people were scribbling in notebooks. Some of them were surreptitiously videotaping with cell phones and tiny flip cameras, even though they weren’t supposed to. The whole point was to get them to buy the videos. But the world was changing at lightning speed, and now we were even posting our own video clips on YouTube and Facebook in the hopes they’d go viral. I mean, on one hand, who will buy the cow if you give away the milk for free, yet once you get a taste of the milk, who can resist coming back to the cow?

  Ohmigod, I was starting to sound like my freakin’ brother.

  He was really getting into it now. “The voice of pass
ion. Is. Not. A book. It’s not a feature film. It’s short and direct, like a haiku straight to your heart.”

  You could hear a clichédrop. Some people were nodding, but most were leaning forward in their seats, waiting for The Answer.

  “But if you start from a place of self-criticism, of self-rejection, you’ll never hear what it’s saying to you. Accept yourself. Start where you are. And the voice of passion will speak to you. It will come like a bolt of lightning. And you’ll know. Your. Life’s. True. Purpose.”

  When I stood up and dimmed the fluorescent lights from the back of the room, preselected audience members rose to light candles circling the front lip of the stage.

  My brother reached behind the curtains at the back of the stage and pulled out a battered acoustic guitar. He plugged it into the amplifier, straddled a high wooden stool, crossed one distressed jean–clad leg over the other.

  And then he actually sang “O-o-h Child,” that old ’70s song by the Five Stairsteps, the one about how things are going to get easier. And brighter.

  Mine were the only dry eyes in the house.

  “Hold the fort,” my father had said before he and my mother left me to babysit the concession table while they took their usual place in the front row. My parents stood up now, flicked on matching Bic lighters, and waved their arms high while they rocked side to side in time to the music. From the back, in their tie-dyed T-shirts that proclaimed TAG! in fluorescent green, they could have been twins, except that my father’s gray curls dead-ended just over his ears, while my mother’s continued up to the top of her head.

  My brother getting famous was the best thing that had ever happened to them. They’d been recreational Deadheads since the ’60s, and once my sisters and brother and I were born, they just threw us into the car whenever there was an outdoor Grateful Dead concert anywhere within striking distance. I grew up thinking summer vacation meant standing in a field somewhere, jumping up and down to “Sugar Magnolia.”

  My parents took it hard when Jerry Garcia died. They’d been counting on becoming full-time Deadheads in their retirement. For a few years they followed tribute bands like Dark Star Orchestra halfheartedly, then they took up bowling. No one was happier than they were when my brother became the family rock star a few years ago.

  Like everything else in his life, the whole guru thing had pretty much landed in my brother’s lap. One minute he was just another guy playing his guitar, with a gift for inspirational gab between sets. Then a fan put a snippet of one of his over-the-top motivational orations up on YouTube, and a week later a producer from The Ellen DeGeneres Show was on the phone booking him. And of course, my brother being my brother, he was a big hit. And the rest is history.

  I yawned and stretched and got ready for the onslaught. Once my brother did his thing, his followers would buy anything that wasn’t nailed down. My parents handled this end of things, both online and at events like this one, and earned a retirement-friendly commission on every item sold. I straightened a pile of T-shirts packaged in little boxes shaped like guitars. I moved the CDs and DVDs a little closer to the books because they were blocking the energy beads.

  A short group meditation was followed by deafening, mountain-moving applause. My parents hurried back and slid next to me behind the table.

  My mother adjusted the No. 2 pencil behind her ear and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I think that was his best job ever,” she said, like she did every time.

  “That’s my boy,” my father said. He alternated this with “way to go.”

  “How’d I do on the lights?” I asked.

  My father laughed. “What a card,” he said, as he swung his arm over my shoulder. I noticed we were almost the same height now. Either he was shrinking, or I was having a vertical growth spurt to match my horizontal one.

  I kissed my father on the cheek and ducked out from under his arm. I had to make my way up to the front fast so I could herd my brother to the signing table before his rabid fans waylaid him.

  “Single file,” my mother was saying to the people already approaching the table as I walked away, “and no pushing. We’ll start when you’re ready.” There was no mistaking my mother’s former profession. She still had that fifth-grade teacher’s vibe going on, and everybody always obeyed her and funneled right into a single line. Two security guys from the hotel crossed their arms over their chests for reinforcement.

  I entertained myself by turning sideways and chasséing through the crowd, homing in on Tag by the booming, melodious sound of his laugh. “Excuse me,” I said when someone wouldn’t get out of my way, and when that didn’t work, I used a discreet elbow.

  “Unbelievable,” I heard my brother say. “What a blast from the past! What are you doing in Austin?”

  I worked my way up to him, fully expecting to see some woman he’d once slept with and whose name he was frantically trying to remember. I knew the drill. I’d stick out my hand and introduce myself so she’d have to tell me her name. And then my brother would pretend he’d known it all along.

  “Dee,” my brother said, turning to me. “You’ll never guess who showed up. Steve Moretti. I went to UMass with him.”

  I swallowed back another yawn. The more famous my brother became, the more old friends came out of the woodwork.

  “Steve,” my brother said, “this is my sister Deirdre.”

  And then the Austin crowd parted to reveal the guy who’d last seen my underpants.

  Failure is a brief and necessary layover on the way to success, but you’ll never reach success if you check your bags at failure.

  Okay, so let me back up for a moment. I was my brother’s keeper. Literally. As in his gatekeeper. If you wanted to get to him, you had to come through me. The setup made perfect sense. He knew I had his back with the fierce loyalty that comes with family. I knew if I screwed up, he’d hire one of our sisters.

  If you haven’t heard of my brother yet, you will. He’s well on his way to becoming the next big thing, coming soon to a town near you. His name is Tag, as in you’re it. He’s kind of a cross between a guru and a rock star. Think Deepak Chopra meets Bono.

  Think Tag, he’s It.

  Being gatekeeper to the family star was a pretty good gig, if you didn’t mind not having much of a life of your own. And the more brightly my brother’s light seemed to shine, the less I had. Basically, I worked 24/7, and if Tag could find a way to jam some more hours or days into the week, I’d be working those, too.

  Yesterday, I’d flown from San Diego to Detroit, then on to Des Moines. Tag liked me to check out potential venues in person before we booked events, so whenever I could make it work, I set out a few days early and crammed some extra stops into my already overloaded schedule, then rendezvoused with Tag and my parents at the next gig. Which meant my brother was still at home eating bonbons when I crawled out of bed in Des Moines at the crack of dawn this morning to fly to the Austin event.

  As I walked across the empty hotel lobby, I stopped in front of a long fish tank to take a sip of my room-brewed coffee. A kaleidoscope of fish were nibbling on flakes of food scattered across the surface of the water. I was riveted. I’d once read an article about the calming and meditative effects of watching marine life. Maybe I’d get some fish of my own someday. Or at least start visiting the aquarium on a regular basis.

  The woman behind the front desk was whispering sweet nothings to someone on the phone when I walked over to check out. A sweat suit–clad couple holding hands passed me as they headed out for some morning exercise.

  When I climbed into a cab, I stared past the driver’s head to a picture of his wife and kids clipped to the visor. The day had barely started, and the universe couldn’t wait to point out that perhaps there should be more to my life than work, work, and more work.

  My cell phone released a tinny instrumental version of “She Works Hard for the Money” the second we pulled away from the curb.

  “What?” I said.

  “Failure is
a brief and necessary layover on the way to success,” my brother said, “but you’ll never reach success if you check your bags at failure.”

  “Can it,” I said. “It’s way too early.”

  “It’s good, though, right?”

  I could picture it at tomorrow’s Austin event. Tag spouting this mumbo jumbo, his bleached white teeth gleaming, his scruffy pre-beard beckoning, his fans hyperventilating.

  I yawned. “Genius,” I said. I checked my watch. “Don’t forget your ten o’clock interview. Your notes are in the red folder on the upper right-hand corner of your desk.”

  When it comes to Des Moines and Austin, you can’t get there from here, so I had to switch planes in Milwaukee. Except that once I got to Milwaukee, the plane to Austin had been canceled. So I had to fly to Dallas–Fort Worth and then take a new plane to Austin. By that point, I was ready to drive, or maybe even walk, the final leg. Until I pulled up the MapQuest app on my cell phone and saw that it was two hundred and eleven miles.

  I’m not that ambitious.

  When I eventually landed at the Austin airport, I was seriously late. I yanked my carry-on out of the overhead bin, then pulled my yoga pants up to meet my baggy white T-shirt. I raced through the terminal so quickly my carry-on kept twisting off its wheels. After the third time I gave up and just dragged it.

  The smell of Texas barbeque called out from the Salt Lick at the edge of the airport food court and reminded me I’d barely eaten all day. I didn’t have time to wait in line, so I grabbed a packaged turkey sandwich from Java Airport Coffee House instead, plus some peanut M&M’s to hold me over until I got to the sandwich. I stopped to check out a live band playing next to the overlook near the top of the airport’s central escalator. If Tag were with me, he’d have insisted on stopping long enough to play a song or two with them. I settled for wiggling my hips in time to the music while I inhaled the rest of my M&M’s.