Page 4 of Midlife Woes (Ex)

I’m not sure exactly what happened, but he duck-walked his ass back inside the house less than an hour later. I held my nose as he went by me and kept reading my book. He came charging back down the stairs half an hour later and stomped his ass over my way.

“What did you feed me you….?” He grabbed his ass and high-tailed it the hell out of my face again. We played out that same scenario a couple more times until he got some sense in his head and stayed the hell on the toilet and away from me.

He about sounded like he was going to die when I passed by the bathroom door singing some ditty at the top of my voice. He played ass tag with the porcelain bowl all day and well into the night. At one point, he claimed that he was dehydrated, but when I put the Pedialyte on the table, he eyed it like it was Hades’ ball juice and wouldn’t touch it.

I’m sure he thought I’d messed with it, and I knew he’d think that; that’s the only reason I offered it in the first place. He got the bright idea to call my kids to complain, but I guess they’re still not talking to him because all he got was the answering machines for each of them.

Even Devon, who was always his shadow, couldn’t be bothered. I’d asked the kids to stay away for a little bit, though they kicked up a fuss about wanting to be here for me. But as their mom, I can’t have them in the middle of this mess. Their whole lives were being turned upside down because of this man’s selfishness, and I know that in the back of their minds, they’re hoping we work things out.

Since I know there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s going to happen, I don’t want them getting their hopes up. Plus, they should be having fun with their friends on campus and not worrying about me since I wasn’t worried about myself. If not for the idiot judge, I would be on a cruise somewhere already; all he did was prolong the inevitable, and now I have to make new travel plans.

The one good thing about this whole mess is that I’ve been able to keep it contained. I swore my kids to secrecy even though Todd wanted to find the skank and put her in her place, and Sheila promised not to kill anyone until I gave her the go-ahead. I’m not even sure if Kevin told hot crotch the reason for her being fired. I think he might’ve told her that they should cool it before I found out.

He obviously didn’t tell anyone about the divorce since he made a dang fool of himself in the courthouse to stay married. But now that I think about it, this is way more fun than if I’d just taken his money and ran. That judge just signed his ass up for six months of revenge, and the cherry on top, he's the one who’d asked for it.

Later that evening, since Jonathan, her husband, was out of town on business, Sheila and I decided to go out on the town. “Where the hell are you going dressed like that?” I walked back into the bathroom from the walk-in closet to put the finishing touches on my makeup, completely ignoring him.

He followed me in like the rube that he is and started grumbling at me, knowing damn good and well that I hadn’t said a word to him in English since I found out about his affair. I kept adding more lipstick to my already red lips, spritzed myself with some come-and-get-it, and sailed out the door, making sure not to touch him since he’d planted his ass in my way. Probably have cooties.

I knew he would be on my ass, but I had one more trick up my sleeve. I waited until he was right there behind me with his shit and picked up my phone to call the third party in our little outing. “Pressy, you ready?” Now, Pressy is Anne’s Daddy, short for Preston. You see, he left his wife a couple of years ago because she screwed her way through half the town, and he found out. That apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Something else about Pressy? He’s always had the hots for me since middle school. Of course, it was just a childhood crush that he’d grown out of, and we’d joked about it here and there when the kids became friends, and neither of us was low enough to cheat on our spouse. But hey, he’s free, and I soon will be; why not?

I’m not trying to date the poor man. Unlike my husband, I wouldn’t cheat on my vows, but Pressy has always been a friend, and since he’d moved away for a while and was only now back, I thought it would be fun to catch up.

Oh, who am I kidding? I wanted exactly what happened to happen. Kevin damn near had an aneurysm after I hung up the phone. “You can’t go out with Preston Thorpe. I forbid you…. I’m talking to you; get back here.” I didn’t hear anything he said after that because I’d walked out the door and closed it.

He pulled it open almost immediately, and Sheila was there, ready for his ass. Now this county is a carry county; the state says concealed, but we don’t play that shit around here. We wear our merchandise for all the world to see. So’s, you know that if you run up, you might get done up. When he saw her grand pappy’s big old ugly shotgun, and she pulled back the chamber, he skidded to a halt in the doorway while I kept heading down the stairs to her red Mustang convertible.

“Ooh, girlie looking good. I ain’t seen your tits since college.” I have to find saner friends. But she ain’t never lying. It’s been a while since I wore anything like this. Not that I dressed like an old frump, mind you. But a mother of four shouldn’t be caught dead in the knee-length floral number with the neckline that came down to my navel.

The damn three-inch heels made me feel like a NYC hooker, but they did wonders for my calves. I felt and looked like a young twenty-something, and there was no shame. A mother maybe shouldn’t dress like that, but a new divorcee sure the hell could. And no matter what that withered-nose asshole judge says, my divorce was final the day my husband told the eighteen-year-old that he loved her.

CHAPTER5

Well, that damn Preston went and turned himself into a thirty-five-year-old hot dad. I’m not kidding. He looked a good ten years younger than the forty-six that he is, a whole year older than yours truly. I had to keep myself from staring because the last time I saw him was a little after his divorce a few years ago, and he was looking a bit rough then.

That damn Sheila kept side-eyeing me as if she was afraid I would hop on the poor man’s dick right there at the bar. I think she’d lost her G-D mind, or she must think I’d lost mine because she knows me better than that. Not while I’m still married to that snake, but once the ink dries on the divorce… well, I just might buy a ticket to the Ho train. I’d have to ask his ex-wife and daughter where the depot is.

Now, the reason Preston was invited tonight was so that I could break the news to him gently before the grapevine got ahold of the story because, unbeknownst to Ratface and the asshole judge, I wasn’t about to waste a whole six months of my life on this stupid reconciliation that I am positive ain’t about to happen.

I have my own plans, thank you very much, and the last week and a half were about all I was planning on giving my ex, so this thing was about to blow up all over the place because I was about to light the fuse.

His smile when he first saw me turned into the same boyish, charming grin I remembered, and it was good to see that he was no longer so broken up after the divorce.

As I said, his son is my eldest son’s best friend, and he and I practically grew up together, so I know more than a little bit about their family dynamic, not to mention that although we hadn’t spent much time together once marriage and children came into the picture, we were still considered friends, so I thought I should let him know what was going on with his skank of a daughter.

Last I heard, she hadn’t taken the divorce well and had gone no contact with him because he refused to go to counseling and reconcile with her bed-hopping slag of a mother. I guess she had daddy issues, and that’s why she’d gone after my spineless weasel of an almost ex.

We got settled at our table and exchanged pleasantries between the three of us, asking after each other’s families and such. The poor man was finally picking himself up off the ground and was looking forward to a fresh start, and I almost had second thoughts about telling him what his child was up to.

He's no slouch, though, and it wasn’t long before he got around to asking me why he’d received the sudden invite. I looked at Sheila for encouragement, suddenly lost for words and regretting that call more than ever now that he was here.

“There’s no easy way to say this, but, um, my husband and your….”

“Wait, wait, don’t tell me. My ex screwed around with Kevin.”

“I wish it was that simple; I’d have knocked her on her bony ass already. No, it’s Anne; your daughter is the one who is having an affair with my soon-to-be ex-husband.”

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