#TripleX (24 page)

An hour later I was fidgeting in front of my computer waiting through the longest log on time in the history of logging into network time ever, practically panting for any information about what OMrRyan69 was tweeting me about.

And then it popped up.

A picture of me doing a beer keg-stand surrounded by the young half-dressed glorious hard bodies of a sea of college boys. The caption: ChrisZo the ultimate MILF. There were over 1000 likes and,
oh my God
, over 600 comments.
This is what I have to do to get engagement on my Facebook page? This?
Should have thought of this shit years ago
.

“Oh my God,” Ang laughed behind me. “That’s so freaking awesome!”

We clasped hands together and jumped around like a pair of middle schoolers that were just asked out on our first dates. I was a MILF!
A Milf!
It didn’t matter that I was too old to know what that meant at first and had to Google it, because a bunch of college boys called me a
Milf
!

We danced around the room and jumped on the bed until my phone buzzed, and I mistakenly answered it without looking. “Chris?” Scott’s voiced demanded into the phone.

“Scott?” I asked, instantly stopping my celebration. Angelisa stood frozen in horror.

“There is a picture of you on Facebook. Upside down. With college boys around you,” he hissed angrily into the phone.

“Yep. I know,” I said, laughing. What did he care, anyway? He threw me away.

“
That’s
the girl I married.
That one
. Not the depressed, pissed off, moody writer who lives to eat cupcakes,” he whispered into the phone.

Why did he have to bring cupcakes into this? They’re innocent
.

And now I wanted one
.

“Whatever this is, baby, go find yourself. Then come back and find me, because I missed that wild girl. I want her back.” My heart flooded with a strange heat, but it wasn’t from Scott.
No, it couldn’t be from him
. It had to be me trying to figure out a way to sneak in some cupcakes without sharing any with Angelisa.

I glanced behind my shoulder at Ang, who was smiling and typing away on my keyboard, probably sharing the picture with everyone she knew and some people she didn’t know. I cupped my hand over the phone and croaked out in a shaky voice, “I’ll be right back.” Then, I bolted out of the room and right out of the hotel.

“What the Hell did you just say to me?” I barked into the phone.

“I said that I missed that girl, Chris. That one in the picture? That’s the girl I married. She was beautiful and carefree and absolutely wild. And if you find her on this trip, I want her back—I want her back so bad.”

I bit back tears. I would not let him hear how his words made me want to cry. “That girl had a lot of self-worth, though, Scott. She’s not going to think you deserve the time of day after what you did. So don’t bank on her coming back
to you
. But she’s definitely back to
me
.”

I pressed END CALL after I said my piece and let the tears pour out of my eyes. Looking around, I found myself outside in a small garden off the side of the little hotel. Dusk was settling over the world, knitting the sky with strands of white clouds and a crimson red sunset.

I didn’t want to go back inside and talk to Ang about the conversation with Scott. I just wanted to simmer in the heat of it, drown myself. I didn’t know exactly how to feel that the person I’d been in love with for more than half my life wanted me back. I wanted to be happy, but mostly I was sad and exhausted. I knew myself well enough to know that I would never trust him again. Every time he would tell me he was putting out the garbage, I’d think he was meeting another woman right out on our curb. I deserved better than that. I deserved someone who stayed faithful to me no matter how many cupcakes I chose to eat.

Thinking about how much I missed cupcakes made me cry even harder.

My phone rang and buzzed in my hand. An unknown number blinked up from the screen. I tried to stifle the hiccupping sobs, but I just couldn’t, “Hello?” I sniffed into the phone.

“Hello?” Jake’s deep voice questioned back.
What the hell was Jake Ryan calling me for?

“How’d you get my number?” I asked, rudely, sobbing.

“You left me a voicemail the other night after your drunken binge and gave me your number. You told me to ‘call you for a good time.’ That offer still good?” he joked.

The sniffles came out faster and louder. Great. The hits just kept coming.

“Jake, I’m sorr—” I tried to apologize, but the tears were running rampant down my face.

“Hey, hey. I’m glad you left me your number… and the picture… it’s not that bad. Really. It’s got like twelve hundred likes so far. That’s a good thing.”

“That’s not why I’m crying,” I sniffed.

“Damn. Is it my Jag?” he asked.

I couldn’t help but laugh, “Shut up, it’s not about your stupid, beautiful Jag!”

“So…” his voice hesitated, “what’s with the tears?”

“The cheater just called me, because he saw the picture.”

He sighed into the phone, “Was he angry?”

“No! He said
that
was the girl he fell in love with, and he wanted
that
girl back!”

“Seriously?” he asked.

“No, Jake. I’m lying. I just like sitting here and crying and making up stories,” I snapped. I ran my hand over my face in frustration. “Damn. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap, I’m just upset.”

“No worries, I get it. Just do me a favor. Don’t go chasing love and attention and respect. If he isn’t going to give it willingly to you, it’s really not worth having then.”

“What the Hell? Are you quoting inspirational memes?” I chuckled, drying my tears with my fingertips. “I’m not going back to him, Jake, I can’t. I’d see them screwing every time I looked at him. I can’t put myself through that, he’s not worth it.”

There was another small hesitation in his voice, “Do you and Ang need any money?”

“No. Why the hell would you ask me that question?” I asked.

“Chris… How are you paying for this trip?”

“See some wives get cheated on, and they rip their husband’s balls right off and run with them. But me? The 3.5 inches of my husband I took with me on this trip is in the shape of his Mastercard and Visa.”

“Really?” he asked, laughing.

“Really,” I answered.

“He doesn’t realize you’re charging everything yet?”

I laughed darkly into the phone, “Scott never paid a bill in his life. I did everything. The man doesn’t even know which bank is the one that holds the mortgage to the house. In a few months, he’s going to really understand how much he depended on me.”

“Jesus… so what was that Facebook picture about?” he asked.

“Your sister dragged me to a Capper-Crapper-Cum loudly party. And for the first time in years, I decided to participate in the party festivities instead of the usual—locking myself in a bathroom, reading off the Kindle App on my phone.”

“What else happened at this party?” I could just about hear his smile through the phone.

“My memory is a bit hazy,” I laughed. Shit, this man was making me laugh.

“Hmmm,” he hummed into the phone. “I’m on your profile right now, and there’s a few interesting pictures here. There’s even one of some twenty-year-old with his tongue down your throat.”

“Mmmm,” I hummed right back. “I vaguely remember a few hugs, sloppy wet kisses with tongues, a bit of inappropriate groping and flashes of boobs. Jealous?”

There was a small pause on the other end of the phone. Then a chuckled, “Maybe.”

“You wish you were at some Frat party kissing some hot young guy?” I wandered through the gardens onto the patio of the small outside bar, right off the lobby of the hotel. The bartender nodded at me and smiled as I sat down on a stool and snagged a handful of peanuts from the countertop.

“Yep, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” he laughed.

I chuckled along with him as I popped the nuts into my mouth and chomped.

“What are you munching on? Aren’t you supposed to be in some sort of diet competition with Ang?” he asked.

“Shut up, who the hell are you, the calorie police?” I laughed, bouncing my foot along to the beat of the low music on the patio. “And we’re not competing.”

“Ha!” he laughed into my phone. “That’s what you think. Have you met my sister?”

“We’re doing great, stop teasing. We even have a reservation tomorrow for our first pole-dancing lesson for our exercise here in the middle of nowhere.”

I heard his quick intake of breath, “Did you say
pole-dancing
?”

“Yes,” I said low. “Freaked out thinking about the words
pole-dancing
and
your sister
in the same sentence?”

“My sister wasn’t the one I was thinking about.”

Squinting our eyes in the bright setting sun, Ang and I stared at the shabby back-alley shop. Five stories of dark purple cloth-covered windows rose above us. The peeling red letters that spelled out
Kinked
over the door were the only indication we were at the right address.

A tinkling bell sounded above our heads as we stepped into the shop. The inside was crammed from ceiling to floor with sex toys. Aisles of debauchery-filled shelves traveled maze-like through the store. People milled about in the small passageways, whispering and peeking up under bowed heads and half hooded lashes. We climbed up four floors stocked full of porn, inflatable body parts, and an insane amount of vibrators that if turned on all at once would most definitely get the plates of earth to shift and rotate, possibly causing the greatest earthquake known to man. It’d been so long, that if that happened, I’d sit spread-eagle on the floor, bracing excitedly for the climax of my life.

We passed giant sized dildos, and there may or may not have been at least five minutes of positioning rubbery, floppy dildos at the base of our pelvises and competing in a sword fight. I won. I was positive that at some point another picture would make it to Facebook, but I’d deal with it then. We weren’t there to pick up sex toys, though we left with three bags each. We were there to conquer our next big thing.

The strip pole
.

On the last landing of the spiraling staircase at the end of the hallway was an enormous dance studio. A floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mirrored room would be the host to our basic ‘Booty’ Camp workout, learning how to pole dance.

All along the hallway, we stared starry-eyed at the selection of stripper apparatuses laid out in front of us. Stilettos, sequins, and leather and lace. “This is terrifying,” Ang whispered, tilting her head toward me.

“Absolutely mortifying.
But
…” I held my finger up and pointed at a stunning pair of silky black panties. “This is my body, and I want to take back control of it, and I want to learn how to move and feel good in it no matter what size I am. Because my size shouldn’t matter if I’m happy with who I am.”

Size
doesn’
t
matter. My new mantra.

“If size doesn’t matter how come none of those dildos come in a three-inch size and crooked?” Ang giggled, pulling down a pair of tassels and raising them over the front of her shirt.

I felt my eyes widen as I nudged her and pointed to the exact same rhinestone cooch stickers that Scott’s hooch wore. “And based on the disturbing popularity of these rhinestone twat stickers, I think I’m going to create a new genre of erotic literature: Jewel-erotica. Obviously there’s some weird unmet need in the world for it.”

Ang shrugged her shoulders, “Dino-erotica, zombie-erotica, it’s all out there. Jewel-erotica might be the next big thing.”

“That dino-erotica sells better than most of my books anyway. T-rex sex must be pretty animalistic,” I joked.

“Maybe, T-rex sex is the kind of sex I’ve been having. You know, extinct,” Angelisa quipped, making me laugh harder.

“We do hold a large variety of reptilian skin suits. And our biggest fetish products here are the furry suits,” a woman called from behind us.

Well, then. “Ummm. Thanks. I now feel like there’s a whole entire alternate universe of sexuality that I’m not aware of, and it will further scar me from jumping right back into the dating scene again.”

Wonderful.

The woman then pulled out a costume that resembled the Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger character, scaring me into never eating cereal again. “Yeah. That’s
grrrreat!
” I cringed.

In a back dressing room right behind the studio, Ang and I slapped our slut apparatus on. A pair of four-inch stilettos and a faux leather body suit that promised to not cause
slippage
on pole. We were both surprised that the costumes—or uniforms—came in our size. But neither of us needed the biggest size, nor the next size down. Apparently, many women much bigger than us were pole-twirling and sexy-girling.

Ang and I had to help each other balance as we walked out of the dressing area. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I wore shoes that high. I’m going to pretend we didn’t fall—twice. Or that it didn’t take us a full ten minutes to stand back up and stop laughing to discover that we were late for class.