I Used to be Fun

I USED TO BE FUN MELANIE SUMMERS Copyright © 2023 Gretz Corp. All rights reserved. Published by Gretz Corp. First edition EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-988891-60-6 Print ISBN: 978-1-988891-61-3 No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. BOOKS BY MELANIE SUMMERS WOMEN’S FICTION The After Wife I Used to Be Fun ROMANTIC COMEDIES The Crown Jewels Series The Royal Treatment The Royal Wedding The Royal Delivery Paradise Bay Series The Honeymooner Whisked Away The Suite Life Resting Beach Face Pride and Piña Coladas Beach, Please (Coming Soon) Crazy Royal Love Series Royally Crushed Royally Wild Royally Tied Stand-Alone Books Even Better Than the Real Thing BOOKS WITH WHITNEY DINEEN The Accidentally in Love Series Text Me on Tuesday The Text God Text Wars Text in Show Mistle Text Text and Confused A Gamble on Love Mom-Com Series No Ordinary Hate A Hate Like This Hate, Rinse, Repeat For every woman out there giving it all you’ve got for the people you love, while you secretly wonder what the hell happened to the life you were supposed to have. I hope you start to live life on your own terms, instead of wasting your days trying to impress people who are never going to understand you anyway. I hope you find a way to live your dreams along the way. This book is for you. You are enough, just as you are, Melanie 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 Available Now: The After Wife Available Now: The Royal Treatment About the Author 1 "When I was growing up, I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific." ~Lily Tomlin This was definitely the most ridiculous thing Jessica Halloway had ever done. Embarrassing. Stupid, even. The worst part was that she knew it wouldn’t work, and yet she’d spent sixty-five dollars plus tax and shipping anyway. There was no way on earth that an herbal vagina steam bath was going to ‘reset her emotional wellbeing so effectively that she’d restore both her energy and sense of optimism to that of a toddler in just one use’ —despite what the glossy brochure claimed. But KirasBestLife.com was having a Fall in Love With Yourself twenty percent off sale so Jess went ahead and ordered it, throwing a wish to the universe that this would finally be the silver bullet for which she’d been searching. And here she stood in her tidy bathroom, naked from the waist down, feeling utterly foolish, not to mention chilly, while she waited for the filtered water in the sandalwood steam bowl to cool. Welp, I guess this is happening, she thought. She might as well do this today. It had been an awful evening. Her son Noah, at the tender age of fifteen, had gotten it in his head that he and his friends should throw a Halloween party in a hotel room. He’d come home from school and started begging Jess to borrow her credit card with the promise of paying for all of it himself. Obviously, she gave him a hard no, but that didn’t stop him from pressing the issue, then raising it again when her husband, Mike (who was already extremely stressed because he lost a major client to another accounting firm), got home from work. Then it was game on. She felt like she should have filmed and narrated it, nature-documentary-style. “The young male challenges the family patriarch yet again, hoping to prove his ability to outwit his father, and therefore be granted the independence he has so long desired. But it’s not to be today for the young buck. The father is unwilling to yield and hand over his credit card so his son can trash a hotel room or impregnate a female of the species. The young male will have to try again another day, when he is stronger and wiser.” The argument raged through supper, but finally died off when Noah was sent to his room to do his homework, which meant he was in there playing Call of Duty on his computer, but at least the fighting had stopped. So Jess sneaked up to the bathroom to give this latest cure-all a try. It had gotten to the point where Jess was that desperate. She’d been miserable for so long now, she was willing to try anything. She had to find a way to ‘fill her cup,’ as her therapist, Fern, had told her. Although, Jess supposed calling Fern her therapist was a stretch. It’s not like she saw her regularly and Fern now had all the dirt on her. She saw her once, three years ago, about a week after the Canada incident—an event of which she was so ashamed, she still hadn’t told a soul. As soon as she booked the appointment, she felt horribly guilty about spending two hundred dollars for an hour (which turned out to be fifty minutes because Fern needs ten minutes to ‘reset’ before her next appointment). Jess gave her a lightning-fast laundry list of everything that might be wrong with her, as if ‘speed therapy’ were a thing. Now that she thought about it, why wasn’t speed therapy a thing? Million-dollar idea right there. But back to her list: a perpetual sense of doom, chronic irritability, and a general lack