That Wedding (27 page)

Phillip rolls his eyes.

"Phillip, I see you rolling your eyes," Pastor says to him. "Why did you get upset about her shoe purchase?"

"I wasn't upset at that point. I just thought it was really stupid to buy more shoes when her closet is already jammed with them."

"Phillip, orange suede platforms are something you don't find that often. You have to buy that kind of shoe when you see it. When you really need a pair of orange platforms, they're impossible to find. Plus, you have no room to talk. Do you know how many pairs of tennis shoes you have? A pair for running, a pair for softball, a special pair for lifting weights, a pair for mowing, a pair of red Adidas just for Husker games. You also have about five pairs of Sperrys, vintage Air Jordans..."

"See?" Phillip says to Pastor. "This is why you can't fight with her. You can't get a word in edgewise."

Pastor says slowly, clearly taking Phillip's side, "Why don't you tell us what did make you mad, Phillip."

Phillip's pissing me off.
This is why you can't fight with her??!!
He should know better than to fight with me.

I always win!

He shouldn't even try.

He should just let me have my way. Our life would go very smoothly, and there'd be no fights.

There. Problem solved. Counseling session over.

I should counsel people.

I laugh to myself. Ha!

I'd be a horrible counselor. I'd tell them to suck it up, quit whining like a baby, and shut the hell up about it. Deal with it. Move on. Stop talking about it. All this is doing is pissing people off.

Namely, me.

Plus, Neil and Joey just texted me and said they're at Taco Tuesday at the bar and would I please let Phillip come out and play. I stealthily hide my phone under my purse and reply.

Phillip goes on, "Well, then she started going through my wallet and looking at my receipts."

"And that made you mad?" Pastor asks him.

I butt in and tell Pastor, "I think you need to tell Phillip that what comes around goes around. I'm pretty sure that's in the Bible somewhere. Or maybe it's like the Golden Rule. Treat others like you want to be treated yourself. Because clearly, Phillip did not follow this simple rule. He wanted to talk about my purchases, he should be prepared to discuss his too. Don't you think?"

Pastor squints his eyes at me. "I suppose that would be considered fair, yes."

"Right, and he got mad because what did I find in your wallet, Phillip? What did you buy?"

Phillip stiffens up his back and sits up straighter in his chair. "I bought wheels for my car."

"Which I thought was HILARIOUS! I asked him why he bought new wheels for his car when she already had a perfectly good pair. Get it? Like the shoes. It was awesome."

Pastor shakes his head at me. "Phillip, how did that make you feel?"

Oh. My. Gosh.

Who cares how it made it him feel?

It wasn't like I was being mean. I was just proving my point. And clearly, I made my point. Which is what pissed him off. He wasn't mad about the shoes. He was mad he got caught being like a double agent.

Or what's that word when you say one thing, but you do something else? Like when you're in high school and your parents tell you not to smoke pot, but then one night you find them getting high in the hot tub? I know, it's hypocritical. Basically bullshit.

Phillip tells Pastor, "It made me feel mad. I didn't think it was any of her business what I'd spent. Plus, she was mocking me."

"I was mocking him because not only did he buy the wheels, he also ordered the horsepower chip. The four thousand dollar horsepower chip. He's complaining I spent two hundred dollars on shoes he thought I didn't need, when he'd just spent six thousand dollars on things his car didn't need!"

Pastor fold his hands on the desk. I see him glance at the sky. Probably saying a prayer for Phillip. "So why did that make you mad, Phillip?"

"I got mad when she starting going on and on about how I don't pay rent, but I live with her. How we don't share our money yet. It was all bullshit."

"Phillip!! It wasn't bullshit, and you know it. It was true."

"Whatever," Phillip says.

"Okay," Pastor interrupts, "so you were both mad. You're both mad now just talking about it. How did you solve the conflict? What happened next?"

"I wasn't mad, Pastor. I thought it was freaking funny. He got all pissed off, stormed out of the house, said he was leaving. I was standing there holding his wallet, and his keys were sitting on the counter. I knew he couldn't go anywhere. Which I thought was even funnier."

Phillip gives me an evil glare. I can tell he's sticking his tongue out at me in his mind.

"So what did you do?" Pastor asks again.

"I waved the keys out the door at him, and then I ran in the bedroom."

I glance at Phillip. He's trying hard not to smile, but the corners of his mouth are betraying him.

"That's it? You hid the keys in the bedroom?"

Phillip now has a full-on grin. "No, she stripped down to some sexy lingerie, laid on the bed, and held my keys hostage."

I raise my eyebrows at Phillip. He's not telling the exact truth. "I did not hold the keys hostage. You told me I don't play fair, and then you took them from me."

I sorta forget where we are. I stare at Phillip's adorable face and look deep into his eyes. He grins at me, grabs my hand, and says, "You don't play fair. You never have."

I wrap a strand of hair around my finger, lick my lips, and think about how he threw me on the bed, how hot it was. "You didn't seem to mind, Phillip."

He runs a finger slowly up the side of my thigh. "Yeah, you're right."

God, he's sexy.

Then I think, shit. Speaking of God, we're in church with a pastor staring at us.

Um, awkward much?

Pastor coughs. "So you solved the conflict with sex. Here's the problem. You didn't solve the conflict. You just temporarily forgot about it. You solved nothing. Sex solves nothing. Phillip, you got mad again just discussing it. That's what happens when you don't deal with problems. They sit in your mind and fester. When you do that enough, they eventually grow into an infection. They infect your marriage with doubt, and you stop respecting each other. You have to take each other's concerns seriously or that infection will ruin your marriage."

I really wanna know where this man did his training. Is he even qualified to do couple's counseling? Does anyone even know? He's comparing marriage to a disease!

Who does that?

He really doesn't make marriage sound all that fun. I'm just saying.

Pastor continues. "It's really not about the shoes, in this instance, or about the money. It's about control. Who wears the proverbial pants in the family. Think about that, and we'll discuss it more next time. Our time is up. See you in a few weeks."

We get in the car, and I say, "Marriage counseling is bullshit. He hasn't taught us anything. Sure, he told us we did it wrong, but he didn't say how to fix it. Talking about it didn't fix it."

"Well, it's something to think about, and there's some validity to what he's saying. There's a gal at work who's going through a divorce, and I heard her talking in the lunchroom about her husband. She was bringing up stuff from the past eight years. I'm thinking she didn't talk to him about their problems, or he didn't listen. Whichever, they didn't fix them at the time, and she's held it against him for a long time."

"Phillip, eight years from now, we're going to laugh about the shoe fight. I laugh about the shoe fight now. It was funny."

"Yeah, it was. Plus, you're sexy."

"Really? Like do you really think I'm sexy, Phillip?"

"Yeah, wanna go home now, and I'll shoe you?"

"Shoe me?"

"I mean show you. I just said shoe because shoe, the shoes, you know."

"It wasn't that funny," I say, but then I start laughing again. "Okay, it was really funny. I'd like to take you home, but Neil and Joey just texted me. They're at the bar and want you to come out and play. They said they'll counsel you."

"That'd be a joke. Do you wanna go?"

"Yeah, for a bit. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna need to go to the bar after every couple's counseling session. Plus, it's Taco Tuesday. Margaritas are half-price and tequila shots are only a buck."

We went to the bar, had some tacos, and a couple tequila shots. For obvious reasons, Phillip is usually the designated driver, so I maybe had one more shot than he did, and when we got home, I was ready for some fun.

I was stripping my clothes off in the bedroom when Phillip walks in. He grins at my nakedness and says, "Just so we're clear, I'm the man. I wear the pants in the family." He points down to his pants. "See?"

I tilt my head, grin, and walk my naked ass slowly over toward him. I grab the front of his jeans and unbutton them. "Not if I can take them off you."

So apparently, Lori and Danny got in a fight about a picture of Danny that's in the newspaper today. In the photo, he has two cheerleaders kissing each side of his face.

And I guess Danny was like, "It's in my contract that I have to do some publicity things."

And Lori was like, "Danny, I read your contract, and I can say with one hundred percent complete positivedness..."

To which Danny chuckled and was like, "You've been hanging around Jay too much, that sounds like one of her words."

And Lori continued. "...it is
not
in your contract that you have to pose with cheerleaders kissing you."

Danny got pissed and was like, "I'm not going to sit here and have you attack my moral character. I'm a good and faithful husband. I'll be a great father. What the hell's happened to you? What happened to my confident, never-the-jealous-type wife?"

He stormed out of their house.

Lori sat there, watched the door close, and whispered to herself, "She got pregnant."