The Denver Cereal (3 page)

“
How come?” Jill
asked.

“
It’s shocking, I know. I
am smooth with the ladies,” Jacob laughed.

She pulled back to see if
he was serious. He winked at her and she returned to looking over
his shoulder.

“
Actually, I fell in love
with a woman and then found out she was married.”

“
Oh, did that stop
you?”

“
Yes, it stopped me,” he
said.

“
Why? I thought that’s how
you people did things.”

“
You people?”

“
Rich people,” Jill
replied.

Jacob laughed.
He’s funny too.
Jill
sighed, melting a little closer to his warmth, his strength. She
nodded at the guitar player in the band when he winked at
her.

“
Is she here?” Jill
asked.

“
Who?”

“
The girl you fell in love
with.”

“
Yes, she’s here,” Jacob
said.

“
Where?”

Jacob pulled back a bit to
look at Jill. His eyes puzzled for a moment. Seeing her sincerity,
he made a vague movement in the direction of a crowded corner of
the room.

Jill waited until they
were in full view of that side of the room, then gave him a soft,
lingering kiss.

Pulling back, she
whispered, “So she knows what she’s missing.”

Jacob blinked, his
eyebrows moving as if he was trying to work it out, then he
laughed.

“
What would it take for
you to kiss me again?”

“
You mean kiss you for
real?” Jill’s voice held her surprise. “You don’t even know
me.”

“
Actually,” Jacob said,
“you wait tables at Pete’s. I play midnight hockey and our team
goes to Pete’s after the games. I’ve been there every Sunday
morning . . . gosh, for years.”

Jill wasn’t sure how to
respond. She had no memory of this man. Sunday mornings were always
crazy. The bars d at two and Pete’s Kitchen filled to the brim with
drunken, happy people. She slung coffee, pancakes, and eggs until
four in the morning every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. She
made great money, and right now money took precedence over
everything, especially handsome men.

Looking over his shoulder,
she saw Trevor’s dark eyes, so like Katy’s, follow them on the
floor. As she watched, the tiny, blonde rich girl, dressed in
another ivory silk gown, took his elbow and guided him toward a
group of elderly couples.

“
I work in an office
during the week. Secretary. But Pete’s is an oasis for me,” she
said finally. “I’ve worked there as long as I’ve worked. I’ve got
friends there. That probably doesn’t mean much to you since they’re
low-class friends.”

“
Friends in low places?”
Jacob asked.

“
What does that
mean?”

“
It’s a country
song.”

“
I don’t listen to
country,” she replied.

As they twirled around the
room, Jill watched the people. That woman’s shoes cost more than a
month of Katy’s day care. Jill nodded slightly. Trevor was right to
choose this life over scraping by every month.

“
May I cut in?” Trevor
said to Jacob. Jill bristled at the sound of his voice.

“
It’s up to the lady.”
Jacob pulled back from Jill. His eyes searched Jill’s terrified
face. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

Jacob took Jill’s hand and
walked her off the dance floor. Picking up two glasses of champagne
from a passing server, he led her to an empty table. He helped her
into her seat and then sat down beside her. She took a sip of
champagne.

“
Will you kiss me again?”
Jacob asked.

Jill blushed.

“
I thought you’d be so
overwhelmed with gratitude that you couldn’t help but kiss me
again,” he laughed, and took a sip from his glass.

“
Why are you uncomfortable
around women?” Jill asked.

“
I’m not around them
much,” Jacob said. “My sister lives in California and our mother
died when I was in high school. I work in construction, so I’m
around men all day long.”

“
You mean you own a
construction company?”

“
I’m a carpenter by trade,
like my father was,” Jacob said. “But yes, I help my father manage
his construction company.”

“
What about these
sisters?” Jill gestured to the group of beautiful girls sitting
with the rich girl’s mother.

Jacob shrugged. “A couple
of them were a package deal with my father’s new wife. The others
are barely out of diapers. We’re not close. I assume that’s your
brother.” He nodded toward the security guard making his way toward
the table.

“
Steve,” Jill
said.

“
How would you like to get
out of here?” Jacob asked. “I don’t mean to be forward, but you
seem uncomfortable, and I am uncomfortable. I’d like to get to know
you better.”

“
Um . . .”

“
You have something
planned?” Jacob asked.

She nodded.

“
I don’t want to miss
that.”

What he’s missing
 
.
 
.
 
.

“
Back off, Trevor,” Jill’s
brother Steve growled.

Jill’s head jerked to see
Trevor storming toward her. Steve put his arm on Trevor’s shoulder
and pushed him away from Jill and Jacob. Turning to Jill, Steve
said under his breath, “Get this over with.”

“
Jill, I need to speak
with you,” Trevor said.

Standing, Jill put her
hand on Steve’s arm.

“
It’s all right,” Jill
said to Steve. “What do you want, Trevor?”

“
Why are you here?”
Trevor’s eyes were slits of rage and indignation.

“
To celebrate your new
life,” Jill said. “I’m very happy for you.”

“
Bullshit,” Trevor spit
the fury packed words at Jill. “You show up in your ‘get lucky’
boots to celebrate my new life?”

“
What I wear is no concern
of yours,” Jill said. “Anyway, I’m just a one night
stand.”

“
Ah, Jill, what did you
expect me to say?”

“‘
I love her with every
cell in my body, every fiber in my being, every thought in my head,
and every action in my life,’” Jill imitated his voice. “That’s
what you used to tell everyone, including me.”

“
Jill, please try to
understand. I still love . . .”

“
Don’t even start. You
threw me away. You threw away our friends. We were all too low
class for you. Yet . . .”

“
I know that look. What
are you up to?”

“
All your low-class
ex-friends are here, Trev. Look around.” Jill leaned into him. Her
face was less than an inch from his face. “We came to wish you a
nice new life as far away from us as possible.”

She watched surprise, then
fear flash through Trevor’s eyes. She took his glass of champagne,
drained it, and then gave it back to him.

“
Thanks,” she
said.

She raised one eyebrow in
challenge. He opened his mouth then shifted to neutral. Jill turned
to see what he was looking at and saw Megan. She was wearing a
server’s uniform and, holding a cordless microphone.

Jill beamed at her oldest
sister. Only Megan could be completely loving and absolutely
disapproving at the same time.

“
Go on, sis,” Megan
said.

Jill took the
microphone.

“
May I have your
attention, please? I’d like to make a little toast to the happy
couple.”

The crowd moved to get a
view of Jill, and the rich girl came to hold Trevor’s
hand.

“
But first, in order to
launch Trevor into his new life, we wanted to share some photos
with you.”

The lights fell and a
screen came down from the ballroom ceiling. The band began to play
“The Way We Were.” As the crowd became silent and a photo flashed
on the screen. Trevor’s rich girl started screaming.

“
I don’t know what’s
here . . . Oh, you can’t turn it off. When you trust
a working person to set things up for you, you should check his
loyalties first.”

The rich girl stomped to
the back of the ballroom to scream at the ballroom
staff.

“
Um . . .
this is a photo of Trevor and me at our junior high school dance.
Aren’t we cute?”

A picture of Trevor and
Jill dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy filled the screen. The photo
vibrated with joy and laughter. The image changed to a picture of
two wrists with matching “Soul Mates” tattoos in scripted blue
letters.

“
Those are our
tattoos.”

Jill turned over her arm
to show the tattoo still inked on her wrist. Glancing at Trevor, he
held up his wrist. His tattoo was gone. His blank wrist combined
with his nasty smile knocked the wind out of her. She gasped for
breath. She gawked at him.

“
Go on.” Megan slipped her
arm around Jill’s waist.

Jill nodded.

The screen shifted to a
legal document — their wedding license.

“
This is our wedding
license. We got married three years later. My parents died when I
was ten so we had to talk my sister Megan into it.”

“
I was against it,” Megan
said.

Jill laughed at Megan’s
strong tone. Megan was always so smart about everything.

The image shifted to their
wedding picture. She wore a short white rayon dress that cost
twenty dollars at Sears. Trevor wore a borrowed tux three sizes too
big. Sitting on his bended knee, she was laughing at something he’d
said. They were kissing in the next photo.

“
I was sixteen and he was
seventeen. Here’s our first apartment. Oh, and that’s a picture of
our puppy, Scooter.”

An image of a tiny mutt
puppy appeared on the screen.

“
He was a wedding present.
Scooter got hit by a car a couple years ago.”

The screen cycled through
three or four pictures of them playing with Scooter, then showed a
picture of them kissing in their high school graduation
robes.

“
We graduated from high
school,” Jill laughed. The picture switched to their graduation
party. “I’m pretty drunk here.”

She was sitting facing
Trevor on his lap, wearing only small panties and her graduation
hat. Trevor’s face was buried in her neck. She heard laughter and
catcalls. Looking from the screen to the crowd, she realized they
were doing something no one expected — these rich people were
enjoying the show.

The picture changed to one
of Jill standing sideways.

“
Okay, you can’t tell, but
I’m pregnant here. Trev wanted a photo every week.”

The screen flashed through
nine months of her growing baby belly. Then there was a photo of
Trevor kissing Jill while she held a one-minute-old
Katy.

“
That’s Katy. Her name is
Katherine, after my mom, but we call her Katy. Isn’t she beautiful?
She’s almost four.” Jill beamed.

The slide show went
through countless photos of Katy. Infant pictures changed to
toddler pictures. Image after image, Jill watched her pretty baby
grow up. They seemed so happy in the photos. The image shifted to
Christmas.

“
You can see the date on
the picture. This was last Christmas. That’s a picture of Trev and
me at Keystone.”

They were sitting on a ski
slope with their snowboards, wrapped in each other. “I love Jill”
was written in the snow, and Trevor was kissing her face. They
looked so blissfully happy. The images cycled through a family
Christmas, pausing at a New Year’s Eve party. Taken at midnight,
the picture showed Trevor and Jill making out in the corner. The
back of Jill’s gold T-shirt read “Trevor’s wish,” while a large
“J,” the rest unseen from the angle of the picture, was visible on
the back of Trevor’s matching T-shirt.

When the next image came
up on the screen, the crowd gasped.

“
These are our divorce
papers. As you can see, Trevor divorced me two days later, and that
means . . .”

“
You’re still married,” a
man’s voice yelled from the back of the room. “Lawyer,
sorry.”

The crowd
laughed.

“
Until tomorrow,” Jill
said. She took a step toward Trevor who was shaking his head. “I
wanted to give you a few things to help you in your new
life.”

The band began to play “I
will survive.”

“
First, here’s my wedding
ring. While I see you managed to get her a diamond, my little
thirty-dollar ring was good for nine years. You should keep
it.”

She pulled the ring off
her left ring finger and placed it in Trevor’s hand.

“
And I think you should
have these.”

There was a whistle from
the back of the room as Jill unzipped the beautiful boots. She gave
the boots to the rich girl.