Page 1 of Boyfriend of the Hour

PROLOGUE

#13: Wear Wonder Woman Underwear insted of the pritty lace stuff

Word of advice: don’t ever turn twenty-four.

Twenty-three is great.

Twenty-three isheaven.

See, no one cares that you’re a screw-up at twenty-three.

Here are the Ways I Know That:

They don’t care that you barely passed high school and flunked out of college. Twice.

They don’t blink if you earn minimum wage as a shot girl between gigs.

They don’t say a word when you still live in your grandmother’s house like a teenager.

No one cares, because at twenty-three, you’re still just a kid figuring shit out.

Then twenty-four rolls around. Adulthood slaps you straight across both cheeks. And man, does it sting.

Within the space of a month of my birthday, I screwed up my knee, lost a part in a Broadway show, and was told I had to leave my childhood home so my grandmother could gallivant around Italy like a seventy-eight-year-old rom-com heroine.

I mean, good for her and all. After spending her golden years raising six grandkids, Nonna deserved a little fun. But honestly. No one ever mentioned that her third act came with a Greek chorus singing, “Time to grow up, Joni Zola.”

Four months later, Nonna was about to leave. Reality had returned to kick my ass to the curb. And that, my friends, was essentially how I found myself perched in a paper gown on the exam table at the Manhattan Surgery Associates, waiting for a boob job consultation that would overdraw my checking account by at least sixty dollars and making lists in my head to pass the time.

Because that was the kind of decision-making I did at twenty-four. Work at a bar and need money for a new place to live?

Bigger tits were probably the ticket.

So much for growing up.

“Bet you don’t get a lot of girls my age in here, huh?” I joked as the nurse, who was named Candy and who couldn’t have been more than three or four years older than me, puttered around the exam room, gathering bits of equipment to take my vitals.

Candy gave me a wry look as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm. “Oh, we get all types here.”

I pulled at one of the black curls at the nape of my neck that had escaped my messy bun. “Not just middle-aged women looking for tummy tucks and breast lifts? That’s a relief.”

Zero smile. Not even a chuckle while she took my blood pressure, removed the cuff, and typed the measurement into the computer in the corner.

Okay, so I tended to make dumb jokes when I was nervous. And yes, I was nervous. You would be nervous too if you had convinced yourself that the only way to achieve a better life was to have silicone balloons shoved under your nipples for a bargain deal of fourteen grand plus interest.

Did I have fourteen grand?