Happily Ever Madder: Misadventures of a Mad Fat Girl (20 page)

33

I
get up early Saturday morning and take Buster Loo for a walk around the neighborhood, during which I notice that the dooky sign and bags have been removed. I speak to several neighbors who are out working in their yards, but no one mentions the sign, so I don’t either. After another big loop around the neighborhood, Buster Loo and I wind back around to our house. Mason is drinking coffee on the back porch when I walk in, so I toss Buster Loo a treat, wash my hands, then pour myself a cup and join him.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he says when I sit down, “but when I turned in here last night, did I see a sign with a bunch of little dog-do bags nailed to it?”

“Indeed you did,” I say and start laughing. I tell him that I stopped to inspect it and then discussed it with Roger, who had called someone on the board to complain.

“Margo could be the stupidest person alive,” he says, and I agree.

“The sign isn’t there anymore,” I tell him. “Buster Loo and I walked up that way earlier.”

He shakes his head and asks me what my plans are for the day. I tell him that I’m going shopping with Jalena, and he tells me that’s great and then starts talking about that case they’re working on while I sip coffee and do my best to look interested. During a break in the discourse, I ask him if he’d like to get dressed and go have breakfast at Round House Pancakes. Lucky for me, he does, and forty-five minutes later, I’m still listening to him talk about work, but at least I’ve got a short stack to help me see the conversation through to the end.

We exchange hugs in the parking lot, and he goes off to work and I head home, telling myself on the drive back that I have got to fix this communication issue with my future husband. Changing the subject doesn’t work; bragging about how handsome he is doesn’t work; asking nosy questions about Connor and Allison works for a minute, but not much longer. I sit at a red light and wonder if things will always be this way, if he’ll always talk incessantly about his job. I think about the women I know who are married to coaches and how they eat, sleep, and breathe athletics. Looks like I’ll be eating, sleeping, and breathing legal monologues until death do us part.

“Oh my,” I say when I walk into the house. “What to do?” I go in the kitchen and load up the dishwasher with what is essentially two racks of cups and glasses and a few pieces of silverware. “It looks like I’m going to have to redefine normal,” I say out loud.

Buster Loo comes in the kitchen and gives me a sweet little-dog look like he really understands what I’m saying. He disappears and returns a minute later with his squeaky ball. He drops it at my feet as if to say “Playing fetch will solve all of your problems.” I go outside and play with him until the doorbell rings, and I do have to admit that I feel better.

“Come on in,” I tell Jalena after I open the door.

“Good morning! Good morning!” she says, sliding her shades up on top of her head.

Buster Loo is so happy to see her that he drags a cushion off the couch and starts humping it right in the middle of the living room floor.

“Buster Loo!” I say, grabbing the pillow. “Stop that!”

I step in the kitchen to get my purse, and when I come back out, he’s on the couch humping the same pillow and Jalena is bent over laughing.

“Buster Loo is getting his freak on!” she says, still laughing.

“He’s really showing off for you,” I say, collecting all of the pillows from the couch and tossing them into the study. I close the door behind me and say, “He only does that for the ladies he really wants to impress.”

On the way to Foley, Jalena and I have a hearty chortle over the dildo incident and agree that we were probably the hot topic of conversation at the police station last night. I ask her if she’s heard from Tia, and she hasn’t.

“It’ll be a few days,” she says. “Poor thing. She’s so embarrassed.” Jalena looks at me. “I honestly don’t know what she expects from Kevin. He’s just a wild-ass man and he’s always been a wild-ass man and he’s always going to be a wild-ass man.” She looks at me. “What do you think about him?”

“He’s a damn sexy wild-ass man,” I say.

“He likes you,” she says, and my heart skips about sixteen beats.

“What?” I say. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry,” Jalena says. “I won’t say anything to anybody.”

“How do you know he likes me?”

“He told me.”

“When?” I say, reaching down to flip the air on my side of the Jeep to high.

“Yesterday when he came in the store to get some lunch.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask her, and my pulse is beating like a jungle drum.

“When could I have told you?” she says. “Oh wait! I know! I guess I should’ve mentioned that while you were checking him out with your handy-dandy binoculars.”

“Leave my binoculars out of this,” I say with a snigger. “You could’ve mentioned it on the way home.”

“I forgot,” she says. “All that excitement got my brain off track.”

“I have the
worst
crush on him, Jalena!” I say. “It’s terrible and I feel horrible about it because Tia is my friend and I would
never
,
ever
cheat on Mason.”

“Yeah, he knows, and that’s why he made me swear not to say anything to you.” She puts her hand up to her mouth. “Oops.” She giggles.

“What did he say?” I ask, feeling like I’m right back in the seventh grade.

“Well, he kind of let it slip, and after he did, I badgered him until he came clean.”

“And?”

“Are you sure you want to know?” she asks. “It’s kind of crude.”

“I’m a crude girl, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Well, we were talking about when we all hung out at Credo’s together the other night and he was saying what a cool and funny girl you are, and then he said something about you being sexy as hell, and I was all over it after that.” She looks at me. “I sat down beside him and told him I wasn’t blind and could dang well see how y’all flirted with each other, but he didn’t want to talk about it. I kept on until he finally gave in and told me that since the very first time he saw you—” She looks at me. “He said you had paint in your hair or something?”

“I did,” I say. “That was the first day the gallery was open and he came to pick up those pictures for his aunt Ramona, and when I saw him, I freaked out and started trying to primp and smeared paint in my hair.” I look at her. “’Cause that’s how I roll.”

“Right. Well, according to him, all he’s been able to think about since that day is effin’ your brains out.” She looks at me. “Only he didn’t say effin’.”

“Oh no!” I wail. “I’ve been thinking the same thing since the same time. I want to have sex with him so bad I can hardly stand it, and it’s driving me crazy. There—I said it! I’ve been holding that in for over a month now.”

“I suspected as much that night we hung out.” She glances at me. “Y’all were just having a little too much fun together.”

I start laughing and tell her how horribly guilty I feel all the time.

“And not just because of the crush I have on him,” I say. “I get bored to death in that art gallery, and I just don’t think this whole full-time-artist thing is for me. I mean, I always had this idea that it would be so cool to have my own studio and paint all day every day, but it’s nothing like I thought it would be. I really don’t enjoy it that much at all, and I’m not making any money, and I miss teaching school.”

“Oh my,” Jalena says, laughing. “If you miss teaching school, it must be rotten!”

I start laughing, too, and tell her that teaching school isn’t
that
bad, but she doesn’t look convinced. Even after I tell her it’s not boring at all and comes with a very reliable income and lots of time off.

“Well, your life sure looks good from the outside,” she says. “You’re about to marry a big-shot lawyer, you own your own business, and you have an adorable little dog that humps pillows like a champ, not to mention that big, beautiful home with a view of the ocean.” She looks at me. “I just don’t see how it can be that bad.”

“It’s not that bad,” I tell her. “I’m so lucky to have what I’ve got, and that’s why I don’t understand why I’m so damn attracted to Kevin Jacobs.”

“Are you happy with Mason?” Jalena asks, and the directness of her question catches me off guard.

“I love him so much,” I say.

“That’s not what I asked.”

I hold up my left hand and point to my engagement ring. “I’ve dreamed about this my entire life. All I’ve ever wanted was to be with him.”

“Still didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m happy with him. I just thought it would be different. I mean, I love him so much, I really do, but he talks my damn head off. And don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a great guy, and I have
so
much respect and admiration for him, but when he’s not boring me to death talking about work, he’s
at
work, because he’s got this big, important case that is unbelievably time-consuming—”

“So it’s just this one case?” She looks at me.

“I don’t know, but I think so,” I say. “Honestly, I thought he worked whenever he wanted to and I didn’t think that was ever very much. I certainly didn’t know it would be like this with him working sixteen hours a day six days a week.”

“So what will life be like once he’s finished?”

“It’s got to get better.” I sigh. “We’ve somehow managed to get really out of tune with each other, and living with him has just turned out to be so—I don’t even know how to explain what I’m trying to say—”

“Disappointing?” she says.

I look at her and sigh again. “Exactly,” I say. “I know I must sound like a spoiled child when I say this, but the entire experience has not turned out anything like I thought it would, and, yes, I’m a little disappointed that it hasn’t.”

“Nothing taints a big dream like a good dose of reality.”

“That’s depressing as hell,” I say, and she starts laughing.

“Being a grown-up sucks,” she says. “Too much of the
real
world, you know?”

“I couldn’t possibly agree with you more.”

“So what are you going to do, Ace Jones, now that your dream life let you down?”

“I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to tell Mason how I feel about the gallery because he bought me that building. Just
bought
it for me, and, hell, even if I did want to tell him, I’d never have a chance because he’s always talking nonstop about this case. And then I have to go eat dinner in that damn conference room all the time with him and Allison and Connor.” I look at Jalena. “You can start billing me by the hour for this if you need to.” She laughs and tells me to keep talking. I ask her if I can call her Dr. J and she says no. Then I remember something Mason mentioned that I’ve been meaning to ask her about. “Hey!” I say, narrowing my eyes. “Mason said you used to date Connor.”

“Uh, that was a while back, and I don’t think ‘dating’ would be the right word, if you know what I mean.”

“Do tell,” I say, thoroughly distracted from my pathetic personal problems.

“It started way back when he was in the tenth grade and I was a senior and we hooked up at a party one night, and then we just kept on hooking up for a long time after that,” she says. “It was never anything serious, but I won’t lie and say I wasn’t crazy about him.”

“So when
was
the last time y’all hooked up?”

“It was after he moved to Tallahassee, and, yes, before you ask, he was dating Allison at the time. I knew he’d started seeing someone, and that was fine because I had, too.” She looks at me. “I used to be kind of a
bad
girl.”

“Used to be?” I snort.

“You’re a funny girl,” she says lightly. “Anyway, the first two years he was at Florida State, we hooked up pretty much every time he came home. Then one weekend, he brought Allison home to meet Mama, and the minute I saw her, I knew our affair was over because she’s just the type of girl that a guy like him is ‘supposed’ to end up with. You know what I mean? One of those nice, polite girls who look like they model for Ann Taylor Loft, and they’re calm and quiet and lovely
all
the time.” She bats her eyelashes and looks at me.

“I know exactly what you mean, because that’s exactly what Rachel McKenzie is looking for in a daughter-in-law. She would very much prefer for Mason to have a clone of Allison.”

I ask Jalena if she ever thought Connor was marriage material, and when she stops laughing she says that she most certainly did not.

“We’re too much alike,” she says. “Which makes for a great affair, but we would’ve killed each other in a real relationship. Men like him have to have a woman who can put up with a lot of shit, and that ain’t me.”

I tell her what Mason said about Connor and Allison getting into it all the time and how she goes home to Tallahassee after a lot of these fights. We discuss whether their problems stem more from Allison being spoiled or from Connor being a jerk. I tell her I think it’s about even. She asks me what I think about Allison, so I take that as an opportunity to share snippets of stories about PoPo, to which I add a considerable amount of personal flair. She laughs so hard she starts snorting.