In Her Shoes Read online

  FEATURING A WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS READERS CLUB GUIDE

  “An entertaining romp . . . This book is like spending time with an understanding friend who has a knack for always being great company. Bottom line: wonderful fit.” —People

  Meet Rose Feller, a thirty-year-old high-powered attorney with a secret passion for romance novels. She’s going to start exercising next week, and she dreams of a man who will slide off her glasses, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she’s beautiful. She also dreams of getting her fantastically screwed-up little sister to straighten up and fly right. Meet Rose’s sister, Maggie—twenty-eight and drop-dead gorgeous. Although her big-screen stardom hasn’t progressed past her left hip’s appearance in a Will Smith video, Maggie dreams of fame and fortune . . . and of getting her big sister on a skin-care regimen.

  Rose and Maggie claim to have nothing in common but a childhood tragedy, DNA, and a shoe size, but they’re about to learn that they’re more alike than they’d ever imagined. Forced into cohabitation, they’ll borrow shoes and clothes and boyfriends, and eventually make peace with their most intimate enemies—each other.

  “If chick lit is indeed a genre, Weiner is creating a smarter, funnier subspecies . . . She is a sharp observer of the frustrations of blood ties.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Weiner, a marvelously natural storyteller, blends humor and heartbreak to create an irresistible novel.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  JENNIFER WEINER is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including Good in Bed, Fly Away Home, and Then Came You. A graduate of Princeton University, Jennifer is also the executive producer for the ABC Family show State of Georgia. To learn more, visit www.jenniferweiner.com.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS

  Facebook.com/AtriaBooks

  Twitter.com/AtriaBooks

  COVER DESIGN BY ANNA DORFMAN • COVER PHOTOGRAPH © RICHARD DARBONNE/GETTY IMAGES • AUTHOR IMAGE BY ANDREA CAPRIANI MECCHI

  Praise for New York Times bestselling author

  JENNIFER WEINER

  In Her Shoes

  “Weiner’s vivid characterizations and her light touch with heavy topics make this follow-up to her bestselling debut Good in Bed an entertaining romp through family battles and toxic relationships. . . . The book is like spending time with an understanding friend who has a knack for always being great company, brightening the best of times and knowing just how to convince you that not only will you get through the worst, you’ll manage to squeeze a laugh or two out of the experience. Bottom line: Wonderful fit.”

  —People

  “Weiner balances romantic formula with fresh humour, deft characterizations and literary sensibility.”

  —Elaine Showalter, The Guardian (UK)

  “Irresistible. . . . Weiner has a fine eye for detail and a knack for making supporting characters come convincingly to life.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “A wonderful contemporary fairy tale. . . . Weiner embroiders serious matters with threads of humor to produce memorable characters and situations.... Here’s a novel that satisfies on many levels.”

  —Library Journal

  “Another winner. Known for her very funny approach to serious matters, Weiner is a gifted storyteller....”

  —The Hartford Courant

  “A novel as delightful as the author’s Good in Bed.”

  —Glamour

  “Heartbreaking and humorous.”

  —Portland Oregonian

  “Satisfying... snappy dialogue and well-crafted characters.”

  —Buffalo News

  “[A] winning work. . . . Is this book destined to be another bestseller? You bibbity-bobbity bet.”

  —Boston Herald

  “A poignant tale of two damaged girls who need to find themselves so that they can find each other.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “In Her Shoes, Jennifer Weiner’s highly anticipated follow-up to Good in Bed, speaks to women who have endured the hardships of sibling rivalry or dreamed of trying on someone else’s life. It is also an honest look at one woman’s struggle with weight. Weiner is at her best. . . . In Her Shoes will make readers laugh and perhaps cry.”

  —USA Today

  “Weiner laces the stories with her trademark wit, sarcasm, and real world insight. . . . Like other great storytellers, Weiner writes what she knows.”

  —Bookreporter

  “Jennifer Weiner, a former newspaper reporter, tells a story with wit and verve.... Her second novel, In Her Shoes, doubles the dosage.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “An engaging tale of two very different sisters and the grandmother they’ve been estranged from since their mother’s death. . . . Weiner’s second novel is every bit as enjoyable and moving as her first.”

  —Booklist

  “Weiner’s heroines are cool. They stay plump and still get to sell screenplays, figure out their problems with their parents, have nice apartments and marry doctors and lawyers. Ladies—and gents—everywhere, alert: You can read Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, munch on chocolate-chip cookies the whole time and not feel like you need to go run a marathon afterward if you want that happy ending for yourself. Without exaggeration, this is revolutionary. It shouldn’t be, but it is.”

  —The Forward

  ALSO BY JENNIFER WEINER

  Good in Bed

  In Her Shoes

  Little Earthquakes

  Goodnight Nobody

  The Guy Not Taken

  Certain Girls

  Best Friends Forever

  Fly Away Home

  Then Came You

  The Next Best Thing

  Thank you for purchasing this Washington Square Press eBook.

  Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Washington Square Press and Simon & Schuster.

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  Washington Square Press

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents 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.

  “One Art” from The Complete Poems, 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

  “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in” from Complete Poems: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Copyright 1952, © 1980, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

  Copyright © 2002 by Jennifer Weiner

  Cover art copyright © 2004 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-1819-5

  ISBN-10: 0-7434-1819-0

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-1820-1 (Pbk)

  ISBN-13: 0-7434-1820-4 (Pbk)

  ISBN-13:978-0-7434-1821-8 (eBook)

  WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Contents

  Part One: In Her Shoes

  Chapter: One

  Chapter: Two

  Chapter: Three

>   Chapter: Four

  Chapter: Five

  Chapter: Six

  Chapter: Seven

  Chapter: Eight

  Chapter: Nine

  Chapter: Ten

  Chapter: Eleven

  Chapter: Twelve

  Chapter: Thirteen

  Chapter: Fourteen

  Chapter: Fifteen

  Chapter: Sixteen

  Chapter: Seventeen

  Chapter: Eighteen

  Chapter: Nineteen

  Chapter: Twenty

  Chapter: Twenty-One

  Chapter: Twenty-Two

  Chapter: Twenty-Three

  Part Two: Continuing Education

  Chapter: Twenty-Four

  Chapter: Twenty-Five

  Chapter: Twenty-Six

  Chapter: Twenty-Seven

  Chapter: Twenty-Eight

  Chapter: Twenty-Nine

  Chapter: Thirty

  Chapter: Thirty-One

  Chapter: Thirty-Two

  Chapter: Thirty-Three

  Chapter: Thirty-Four

  Chapter: Thirty-Five

  Chapter: Thirty-Six

  Chapter: Thirty-Seven

  Chapter: Thirty-Eight

  Chapter: Thirty-Nine

  Chapter: Forty

  Chapter: Forty-One

  Part Three: I Carry Your Heart

  Chapter: Forty-Two

  Chapter: Forty-Three

  Chapter: Forty-Four

  Chapter: Forty-Five

  Chapter: Forty-Six

  Chapter: Forty-Seven

  Chapter: Forty-Eight

  Chapter: Forty-Nine

  Chapter: Fifty

  Chapter: Fifty-One

  Chapter: Fifty-Two

  Chapter: Fifty-Three

  Chapter: Fifty-Four

  Chapter: Fifty-Five

  Chapter: Fifty-Six

  Chapter: Fifty-Seven

  Chapter: Fifty-Eight

  Chapter: Fifty-Nine

  Chapter: Sixty

  Acknowledgments

  The Next Best Thing Excerpt

  About the Author

  About Atria Books

  A Readers Club Guide

  For Molly Beth

  PART ONE

  In Her Shoes

  ONE

  “Baby,” groaned the guy—Ted? Tad?—something like that—and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall.

  This is ridiculous, Maggie thought, as she felt him bunching her dress up around her hips. But she’d had five vodka-and-tonics over the course of the last hour and a half, and at this point was not in much of a position to call anything ridiculous. She wasn’t even sure she could pronounce the word.

  “You’re so hot!” Ted or Tad exclaimed, discovering the thong that Maggie had purchased for the occasion.

  “I want the thong. In red,” she’d said.

  “Flame,” the salesgirl at Victoria’s Secret had replied.

  “Whatever,” said Maggie. “Small,” she added, “extra small if you have it.” She gave the girl a quick scornful look to let her know that while she might not know red from flame, she, Maggie Feller, was not worried. She might not have finished college. She might not have a great job—or, okay, after last Thursday, any job at all. The sum total of her big-screen experience might be the three seconds that a sliver of her left hip was visible in Will Smith’s second-to-last video. And she might be just barely bumping along while some people, like namely her sister, Rose, went whizzing through Ivy League colleges and straight into law schools, then into law firms and luxury apartments on Rittenhouse Square like they’d been shot down the water slide of life, but still, she, Maggie, had something of worth, something rare and precious, possessed by few, coveted by many—a terrific body. One hundred and six pounds stretched over five feet and six inches, all of it tanning-bed basted, toned, plucked, waxed, moisturized, deodorized, perfumed, perfect.

  She had a tattoo of a daisy on the small of her back, the words “BORN TO BE BAD” tattooed around her left ankle, and a plump, pierced red heart reading “MOTHER” on her right bicep. (She’d thought about adding the date of her mother’s death, but for some reason that tattoo had hurt more than the other two put together.) Maggie also had D-cup tits. Said tits had been a gift from a married boyfriend and were made of saline and plastic, but this didn’t matter. “They’re an investment in my future,” Maggie had said, even as her father looked hurt and bewildered, and Sydelle the Stepmonster flared her nostrils, and her big sister, Rose, had asked, “Precisely what kind of future are you planning?” in that snotty voice of hers that made her sound like she was seventy. Maggie didn’t listen. Maggie didn’t care. She was twenty-eight years old now, at her tenth high school reunion, and she was the best-looking girl in the room.

  All eyes had been on her as she strolled into the Cherry Hill Hilton in her clinging black spaghetti-strap cocktail dress and the Christian Louboutin stilettos she’d swiped from her sister’s closet the weekend before. Rose might have let herself turn into a fat load—a big sister in more ways than one—but at least their feet were still the same size. Maggie could feel the heat of the gazes as she smiled, sashaying over to the bar, hips swaying like music, bangles chiming on her wrists, letting her former classmates get a good look at what they’d missed—the girl they’d ignored, or mocked and called retarded, the one who’d shuffled down the high school hallways swimming in her father’s oversized army jacket, cringing against the lockers. Well, Maggie had blossomed. Let them see, let them drool. Marissa Nussbaum and Kim Pratt and especially that bitch Samantha Bailey with her dishwater-blond hair and the fifteen pounds she’d packed on her hips since high school. All the cheerleaders, the ones who’d scorned her or looked right past her. Looked right through her. Let them just feast their eyes on her now . . . or, better yet, let their wimpy, receding-hairlined husbands do the feasting.

  “Oh, God!” moaned Ted the Tadpole, unbuckling his pants.

  In the next stall, a toilet flushed.

  Maggie wobbled on her heels as Ted-slash-Tad aimed and missed and aimed again, jabbing at her thighs and backside. It was like being bludgeoned with a blind snake, she thought, and snorted to herself, a noise that Ted evidently mistook for a groan of passion. “Oh, yeah, baby! You like that, huh?” he demanded, and started poking her even harder. Maggie stifled a yawn and looked down at herself, noting with pleasure that her thighs—firmed from hours on the treadmill, smooth as plastic from a recent waxing—did not so much as quiver, no matter how violent Ted’s thrusts got. And her pedicure was perfect. She hadn’t been sure about this particular shade of red—not quite dark enough, she’d worried—but it was the right choice, she thought, as she looked down at her toes, gleaming back up at her.

  “Jesus CHRIST!” yelled Ted. His tone was one of commingled ecstasy and frustration, like a man who’s seen a holy vision and isn’t quite sure what it means. Maggie had met him at the bar, maybe half an hour after she’d arrived, and he was just what she had in mind—tall, blond, built, not fat and balding like all the guys who’d been football gods and prom kings in high school. Smooth, too. He’d tipped the bartender five dollars for each round, even though it was an open bar, even though he didn’t have to, and he’d told her what she wanted to hear.

  “What do you do?” he’d asked, and she’d smiled at him. “I am a performer,” she said. Which was true. For the past six months, she’d been a backup singer for a band called Whiskered Biscuit that did thrash-metal covers of 1970s disco classics. So far, they’d booked precisely one gig, as the market for thrash-metal renditions of “MacArthur Park” was not overwhelming, and Maggie knew that she was in the band only because the lead singer was hoping she’d sleep with him. But it was something—a tiny toehold on her dream of being famous, of being a star.

  “You weren’t in any of my classes,” he’d said, tracing his forefinger around and around her wrist. “I would have remembered you for sure.” Maggie looked dow
n, toying with one of her auburn ringlets, debating whether she should slide her sandal along his calf, or unpin her hair, letting her curls cascade down her back. No, she hadn’t been in his classes. She’d been in the “special” classes, the “remedial” classes, the classes with the scrubs and the burnouts and the big-print textbooks that were a different shape—slightly longer and thinner—than any of the books the other kids carried. You could tuck those books under brown paper covers and shove them in your backpack, but the other kids always knew. Well, fuck them. Fuck all of them. Fuck all the pretty cheerleaders and the guys who’d been happy to fool around with her in the passenger seat of their parents’ cars but wouldn’t even say “Hi” to her in the halls the next Monday.

  “Christ!” yelled Ted again. Maggie opened her mouth to tell him to keep it down, and threw up all over the floor—a clear spill of vodka and tonic, she noted as if from a great distance, plus a few decomposing noodles. She’d had pasta—when? Last night? She was trying to remember her last meal when he grabbed her hips and swung her around roughly so that she was facing the front of the stall, banging her hip against the toilet-paper dispenser in the process. “AGHH!” Ted announced, and came all over her back.

  Maggie whirled to face him, moving as quickly as she could through the sloshing vodka/noodle mess on the floor. “Not the dress!” she said. And Ted stood there, blinking, his pants puddled around his knees, his hand still on his dick. He grinned foolishly at her. “That was great!” he said, and squinted at her face. “What was your name again?”

  Fifteen miles away, Rose Feller had a secret—a secret currently splayed flat on his back and snoring, a secret who had somehow managed to dislodge her fitted sheet and kick three pillows to the floor.

  Rose propped herself up on her elbow and considered her lover by the glow of the streetlights that filtered through her blinds, smiling a sweet, secret smile, a smile none of her colleagues at the law firm of Lewis, Dommel, and Fenick would have recognized. This was what she had always wanted, what she’d spent her whole life secretly dreaming of—a man who looked at her like she was the only woman in the room, in the world, the only woman who’d ever existed. And he was so handsome, even better looking without his clothes than in them. She wondered if she could take a picture. But the noise would wake him up. And who could she show it to?