Theory of Happily Ever After

Kristin Billerbeck

Description

According to Dr. Maggie Maguire, happiness is serious science, as serious as Maggie takes herself. But science can't always account for life's anomalies--for instance, why her fiancé dumped her for a silk-scarf acrobat and how the breakup sent Maggie spiraling into an extended ice cream-fueled chick flick binge.Concerned that she might never pull herself out of this nosedive, Maggie's friends book her as a speaker on a "New Year, New You" cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. Maggie wonders if she's qualified to teach others about happiness when she can't muster up any for herself. But when a handsome stranger on board insists that smart women can't ever be happy, Maggie sets out to prove him wrong. Along the way she may discover that happiness has far less to do with the head than with the heart.Filled with memorable characters, snappy dialogue, and touching romance, Kristin Billerbeck's The Theory of Happily Ever After shows that the search for happiness may be futile--because sometimes happiness is already out there searching for you."Billerbeck has the most delightful voice I've ever read. I adore her stories, and she returns with an enchanting new novel, The Theory of Happily Ever After. I laughed, cried, and rejoiced with her wonderful characters and was sad when the story ended. Highly recommended!"--Colleen Coble, USA Today bestselling author

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493414031
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2018 by Kristin Billerbeck
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1403-1
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. ( www.Lockman.org )
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Endorsements
“Billerbeck has the most delightful voice I’ve ever read. I adore her stories, and she returns with an enchanting new novel, The Theory of Happily Ever After . I laughed, cried, and rejoiced with her wonderful characters and was sad when the story ended. Highly recommended!”
— Colleen Coble , USA Today bestselling author
“Kristin Billerbeck is back with a classic, witty chick lit. The Theory of Happily Ever After is a journey of self-discovery peppered with wisdom and truth. I loved Maggie Maguire, finding a little bit of myself in her. A must-read for lovers of chick lit.”
— Rachel Hauck , New York Times bestselling author
“I absolutely adored The Theory of Happily Ever After from first page to last. Billerbeck’s signature humor made me laugh again and again, and her memorable characters stole my heart. Don’t miss this one!”
— Robin Lee Hatcher , Christy and RITA Award–winning author of You’re Gonna Love Me
“Billerbeck’s latest, The Theory of Happily Ever After , is a fun romance with a multilayered main character you’ll want to be friends with. This read does not disappoint in humor and romance. Highly recommend!”
— Robin Caroll , author of Weaver’s Needle
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the amazing people in my life who believed in me when I’d lost faith in myself. Sometimes God gives you friends to help you carry the load, but ultimately he has equipped you to handle what life throws at you. Words cannot express my gratitude for my fellow writers, who showered me with love and encouragement when I felt none: Colleen Coble, Denise Hunter, Nancy Toback, Cheryl Hodde, Jenny B. Jones, Christa Allan, Sibella Giorello, Kathleen Y’Barbo, and C. S. Lakin.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Endorsements
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
1
A harsh reality is better than a false fantasy. Life is not a fairy tale.
The Science of Bliss by Dr. Margaret K. Maguire
L IFE IS FILLED WITH IRONY . I mean, I wrote the book on bliss, and currently I am the most miserable person I know. Probably I’d be the most miserable person you know as well. Which is why I have been perfectly content to hole up in my tiny apartment for the past two months and binge-watch romance movies while simultaneously gorging on eggnog ice cream. There’s the science of happiness, and then there’s reality.
Unlike life, heartwarming television movies never let you down, and there is no unexpected twist in which the heroine looks like one big cosmic punch line. The hero in a TV movie never leaves our heroine for the mean girl—the mean girl actually gets shot down. There is no crisis too great that it cannot be overcome by true love. And everyone lives happily ever after. Isn’t that how life should be? Truly blissful?
“In a Hallmark movie,” I say to the cat, Neon, “your ex never tells you that his new girlfriend’s hobby is aerial dance or that she’s a professional trapeze artist. It just wouldn’t happen.”
Neon raises his head and looks at me questioningly. The cat generally stays near the door across the sparsely decorated apartment. It’s as if he instinctively knows my failures might be contagious. My living room has a barren, college-dorm feel, which serves as a constant reminder that I didn’t make the time to buy a condo with the royalty windfall from my book, that my hard-won title of doctor hasn’t translated into practical motivation. The walls are a stark white, and there’s a white processed-wood TV shelf against the wall by the door, a navy rocking chair my parents handed down to me, and the white vertical blinds that came with the place. Nothing screams home. It’s like a lab experiment.
I set another Diet Coke bottle on the lonely IKEA coffee table. “Well, it wouldn’t,” I reiterate.
Neon meows. Even the cat is annoyed with me.
I scoop up a giant spoonful of ice cream and let it touch my tongue and linger momentarily, then devour it as though I haven’t seen food for weeks. For one incredible moment, I feel only unadulterated joy, and Jake Stone’s epic departure is not fresh on my mind. Dirtbag.
There is nothing more fantastic than the sappy, sugary-sweet love of a television movie followed by a creamy chaser of gelato. My life’s work—the scientific study of how people find joy in life—isn’t proper science. I see that my research is all unfounded now. Perhaps to find the secret of happiness, I should have studied miserable people and found out what they were missing. True bliss, it seems, is found in the avoidance of ugly truths and evading reality. Reality bites.
My phone trills and Jake’s handsome face lights up the device. Argh. Why does he have to look so good? This would be so much easier if he were troll-like in appearance. I debate answering. Do I really want to hear anything he has to say?
Curiosity rules out.
“Hello,” I say in a clipped business tone.
“Maggie, hi. I’m so glad you answered.”
Silence. Inwardly, I’m congratulating myself on my self-control because I really want to resurrect my nana’s barrage of Italian swear words.
“So, I know it’s awkward that I didn’t invite you to the wedding, but we didn’t—”
“We?” I don’t know why, but the word set me off. “There’s no we , Jake. There’s you and this ridiculous acrobat you’ve decided to marry on some wild whim or early-onset midlife crisis. We would be the couple who were engaged for one year, an appropriate, reasonable length of time to plan a wedding.”
“You’re still mad.”
“I’m angry. Dogs get mad. People get angry. You made the university question my judgment. My chances of getting to work for Dr. Hamilton are nil.” Dr. Hamilton is the renowned expert in the science of happiness at NYU. He takes on very few neuroscientists, and without my university’s glowing recommendation, the chances of me going anywhere have evaporated, along with my dignity.
“So it’s my fault you’ll never work with the esteemed Dr. Hamilton ?” Jake asks. “See, Maggie, you’re so miserable to be around, and you take no responsibility for your own failures. It’s comments like those that make me necessary in your work. You can’t be Eeyore and go preaching about the science of happiness. We’ll talk to the university together when I get back. We are fantastic together. As a working couple. ”
“Is there a reason you called, Jake?” Besides wanting to create a reason for justifiable homicide?
“Maggie, you’re a terrible speaker. You excel in your data gathering and research, but you need me to sell it. You always have. You’re a scientist. Don’t let your feelings cloud your judgment. If you ever want to get to NYU under Hamilton, you need me.”
I pull the phone away, stare at it, and slap it back to my ear. “This is about your job?” I mean, one assumes when you dump your boss in front of the entire tenured faculty, you’re going to accept that you must look elsewhere for work. Am I right?
“Think about those awkward speeches you’ve made on the speaker circuit. People were walking out in droves.”
My TED Talk did okay without you. Half a million books sold in twenty different languages! I need you? The data tells a different story!
But I don’t say any of this because some part of me—some icky, feeble part of me that I clearly need to shed along with the gelato weight—must think his version of the truth is genuine. He’s rendered me a complete cliché. Kicked to the curb for a younger, hotter, more inane version of myself, and I never even saw it coming.
He doesn’t stop here though. Apparently he hasn’t completely destroyed me emotionally and professionally. “I’ll be back from our honeymoon on the 27th. I’ll see you in the lab on the 28th and we’ll work on your presentation skills. Anichka is anxious to meet you. I think you’d be a great mentor to her.”
Then he hangs up on me. He hangs up on me! I’m left shaking with rage, obsessing over everything I should have said.
I clamp my eyes shut and mumble some divinely inspired mantra to get his voice out of my head.
I am enough.
I am worthy of love and respect.
I choose success.
I forgive Jake as a gift to myself.
But it’s no use. The murderous thoughts don’t stop coming, and I’m pretty certain that my Lord Jesus along with all decent people would frown upon that. Without looking, I press the volume button on the television until the sickly-sweet movie channel, and not the positive thought mantras, quiets the phone call.
It isn’t five minutes until my peace is once again shattered. My front door slams against the wall with a loud cr