Happily Ever Madder: Misadventures of a Mad Fat Girl (12 page)

“I wasn’t really in love with that ugly little chipmunk; I just let my emotions get the best of me because he was like Macho Man Randy Savage in the sack!”

“Then there was the married man—I’m sorry, men,” Olivia says.

“I ain’t even gettin’ into all that,” Jalena says, waving off her sister’s comment.

“Just please tell us how you knew the men were married,” Avery begs.

“Stalking,” Jalena says simply, and my ears perk up. So not only have I found a fellow fat girl; I’ve found a fellow stalker!

“Isn’t that against the law?” Avery asks, and I want to tell her to stop being so serious because she’s killing my buzz.

“Only if you get caught,” I say.

Jalena’s eyes light up when she looks at me. “You stalk, too, girl?”

“Every chance I get!” I say.

“Oh good Lordy, help us all,” Olivia says. “Y’all two are going to get into some trouble. I can see it right now. Arrested for trespassing. Mug shots in the paper.”

We move the party into the break room and start munching on snacks again. When Olivia announces that she has to go home, Tia tells her she’ll call her designated driver, and ten minutes later, Kevin Jacobs walks in the door.

“Holy guacamole,” I say when I see him. “Hello, Travis!” I call out, and everyone dies out laughing and I stand there wondering what’s so funny, and then I realize the error of my ways. He’s looking at me like I’m crazy and I stumble over and pat him on the shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Hello, Kevin. I just heard a fabulous story about Travis and I got confused.”

“Y’all know each other?” Tia asks.

“For a minute,” I say, despite the fact that the conversation had moved on.

“We’ve met,” Kevin says, smiling. “How are you, Ace?”

“Drunk as a bicycle,” I say, smiling and putting my arm around Tia.

“I didn’t know bicycles drank,” Kevin says, and Tia dies out laughing.

“They don’t,” I say, still smiling through the foggy haze. “That’s why it’s so bad.” I laugh at myself because I have such a way with words. A way to make a fool of myself, that is.

“C’mon, ladies, you know the drill!” Kevin calls. “Everybody in the Tahoe!”

Kevin Jacobs hops in the driver’s seat of Tia’s Tahoe and we all pile in the backseat. We continue to have ourselves a fine ol’ time as he drives all over town, dropping us off one by one. When he pulls up at my house, I invite Tia to stay with me, but she looks at me and says, “Oh, I’ll just stay with him. He lives right around the corner.”

My jaw drops while I process the fact that, first of all, Kevin Jacobs the sexpot lives right around the corner from me and, second, Tia just said she was staying with him. I poke her in the arm and whisper, very loudly, “You and him are doin’ it?”

She starts laughing, raises her eyebrows, and nods. I stare at her for a moment in total disbelief, not wanting to accept this as fact. They both turn to look at me, so I reach for the door handle and mumble something stupid about the weather as I crawl out of the Tahoe.

“You need me to walk you to the door?” Kevin asks.

“No, thanks,” I yell, looking back and waving. “I’ll be—” I don’t finish my sentence because I step off the driveway and fall down in the yard. I roll around, cussing like a sailor because the wet grass feels so nasty. I finally get up and see Tia is standing outside her Tahoe bent over laughing. I look at Kevin, who’s just stepped out of the vehicle, and even in my drunken stupor, I can see he really wants to laugh.

“Go ahead,” I holler at him. “I’m a professional.”

“A professional what?” Tia squeals.

“Damn rodeo clown. Hell, I don’t know.” I look back at Kevin. “But I’m sexy, ain’t I, yo?”

“Yo, baby, that you are,” he says when he finishes laughing.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Tia asks, walking around to help me brush the grass off my arms and back.

“I don’t remember the last time I was any better!” I say, crawling up the steps on all fours. She goes back to the Tahoe and they wait for me to open the door and get in the house before they leave.

Mason still isn’t home, so I go inside and lie on the floor with Buster Loo for a while. When he wanders into the sunroom, I roll around and somehow manage to get on my feet, and then stumble up the stairs to the bathroom. I step in the shower, still not believing all that time I spent lusting over Tia’s designated driver.

21

F
riday morning, Mason brings me some aspirin, ice water, and a cold rag. I get up, take one look at my hair, and head straight to the shower because no amount of heat could tame the mess on my head after going to bed with wet hair the night before. After a nice, warm shower, I put on some comfy clothes and ease down the steps.

Mason hands me a plastic cup of Sprite with six cherries, which has long been my go-to hangover remedy. He sips coffee and waits for me to get ready so he can take me to work. He drives me to the gallery, making fun of me the whole way for getting so drunk at Girls Night In. He tells me that when he got in bed last night, I flipped over and started talking about going on a cruise with a rabbit.

“Travis,” I say, laughing despite my aching head. “It was a story Jalena told us about the worst experience she’s ever had with one of her online suitors.”

“Jalena Flores?” he asks. “I think Connor used to date her. I know I’ve heard him mention that name.”

I roll my head over on the headrest so I can see him. “Honestly, I can see those two getting along great.” I hold up two fingers. “Peas in a pod.”

“I’ll ask him about her sometime when Allison isn’t around.”

I look back at the windshield and tell myself not to read anything into that comment. I’m glad I have a headache because that’s the kind of offhand remark that would normally get me fired up.

“Nice,” I whisper. “Be nice. Keep that new leaf turned over the right way.”

“What?” Mason asks.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I was just thinking that Jalena has to be several years older than Connor.”

“Yeah, I think so.” He glances at me. “She has a sister, right? Olivia Kennashaw.”

That got my attention. “What did you say?”

“Doesn’t Jalena have a sister named Olivia Kennashaw?”

“I didn’t catch Olivia’s last name,” I say, thinking back to when she came in. Despite my hellish hangover, I’m certain Tia used only her first name when she introduced Olivia to Avery and me. I would’ve remembered had she mentioned the last name of my archenemy.

“Her in-laws own that chain of home and garden stores.” He looks at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Are you sure that’s who she is?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Her husband’s name is Josh and his mother was at the grand opening.” He looks at me. “What is her name?”

“Lenore?” I ask, praying he’ll say that’s not her.

“That’s her! Lenore Kennashaw. She does a lot of charity work, and, hey! Didn’t she take home the last item at the auction?”

“Yes, she did, and she didn’t pay for it, and then she went and donated it to charity.”

“Well, that was nice of her.”

I look at him to see if he’s serious, and he is. I just stare out the window and don’t say a word.

“Ace?” He’s looking at me now.

“Yeah, sweetie, I’m sorry. My head just really started thumping.” And that’s the honest truth. Mason turns into the parking lot, where Kevin Jacobs’s truck is parked two spaces down from my car. All the other vehicles are gone.

“Well, I guess everyone but Tia got an early start this morning,” I mumble.

“Is that Kevin’s truck?” Mason asks, pulling in beside it.

“Yes, he drove us all home last night,” I tell him. “I think he and Tia have a little thing going.” I imagine him and Tia having buck-wild sex all night, and that makes me so mad and jealous that I want to get out and kick the fenders off his truck, only I’m pretty sure I couldn’t get my foot up that high right now. I look back at Mason, who looks ridiculously handsome this morning, and wonder what in the hell is wrong with my brain.

“Ah.” He looks over at me. “Well, I guess that answers the lesbian question.”

“I guess it does.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that along to Connor,” he says, and we both laugh.

“Thank you so much for taking such good care of me this morning,” I say, and I mean it with all my heart. I lean over and he gives me a hug and a kiss and we tell each other that we love each other and I hop out of his shiny Escalade.

I unlock my car and move it to the back corner of the parking lot, where it’s nice and shady. Walking back toward the gallery door, I drop my keys in the shrubbery and have to get down on all fours to try to scratch them out of the bushes.

“I am about to marry my dream man,” I tell myself as I poke around the leafy gardenias. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

“Well, you’re on your hands and knees on a sidewalk, for starters,” I hear someone say. “Did you crawl to work today?”

When I raise my head, I see a pair of tennis shoes with bulldozer grips on the bottom. I look up a pair of muscular legs and past black athletic shorts, a belly button, and a bare chest. My eyes finally come to a stop on the smiling face of Kevin Jacobs.

“Well F me in the A!” I mumble, finally getting my fingers around my keys.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I say, getting up on my feet and brushing off my knees. I look at my reflection in the plate-glass window. My hair is pulled back in a bushy ponytail and I’m wearing my oldest khaki Bermudas with a Margaritaville T-shirt. So much for dressing for success.

“Good morning, Ace Jones,” he says and shows no signs of getting in his truck to leave.

“Good morning, Kevin Jacobs,” I say. I look from his dark brown eyes down to his chest, and then up again. “Out for a morning run?”

“Yeah, had to come pick up my pickup truck.”

“I see.” He doesn’t mention Tia, so I don’t, either. The sun is beating down on my face and giving me a worse headache than I already have, so I ask him if wants to come inside and I’m secretly pleased that he does. He follows me into the gallery and I point him toward the watercooler in the break room.

“Looks like y’all had a big time in here last night,” he calls out.

“Yeah, we had a blast,” I answer, wishing he would leave but at the same time fantasizing about him coming into my office and throwing me up on top of the desk.

Then the questions start flying around in my head: Why couldn’t he come by earlier? Why did he have to come inside? Why couldn’t he just get in his damn redneck fuck-a-billy pickup truck and go to the store and get himself some water? Why does he show up when I’m outside on my hands and knees scrambling around in the bushes? And why is he not in here letting me look at him without his shirt on?

I lay my head down on my desk and curse myself for having a raging crush on a guy who most certainly boned my new BFF last night and probably hasn’t had a shower since. With that image to clear my head, I walk into the break room and find him looking in the fridge.

“What’s all this stuff from Eden’s Treats?” He looks at me. “Are you a vegetarian?”

“Do I look like a vegetarian to you?” I ask. I want to scream for him to get the hell out of my refrigerator and get out of here, but when he turns back around and leans over again, I feast my eyes on his backside and then decide to let him keep looking so I can, too.

“No,” I say, taking a seat at the table. “That’s some of Avery’s leftovers.”

“Ah, yeah, the young girl?”

The young girl
, I think.
Nice. So what am I?
“Yes.”

“She looks like the type that would eat stuff from there.”

“It’s her favorite restaurant.”

Thankfully my cell phone starts ringing and gives me an excuse to get out of there and back into my office.

“Just help yourself to whatever you want.”

“Oh no, I was just leaving,” he says and closes the fridge.

I don’t get to the phone before it goes to voice mail. I check it and hear Chloe’s sweet voice telling me it’s nothing urgent; she just wants to chat. I make a mental note to call her later and go back out in the gallery, where Kevin is perusing my new display of mermaids.

“That is one sexy mermaid,” he says, moving his eyes from the picture to my boobs.

I look at him in his running shorts with the band of his underwear showing, and there’s nothing I can say or do to deny the fact that I want him so bad I can hardly stand it.

“Thank you,” I reply and just stand there, looking.

“You’re welcome,” he says and finally looks me in the eye. I just can’t help myself. I start thinking about him naked again. I mean, he’s already halfway there.

“So how’d your mom like her picture of the daisies?”

“Oh, she loved it!” he says enthusiastically, and my ego inflates to heights previously unknown.

We make small talk and I’m thankful for my killer headache so I don’t suggest that we go upstairs and bang on the balcony. He finally leaves and I go splash water on my face and stretch out on the sofa, and that’s where I am two hours later when Avery bounces in at lunchtime, a full hour before her usual time of arrival.

22

“H
ey, I got out of class early and wanted to see if you needed some lunch.” Avery stops to look at me. “Are you okay?”

“I think I might live, but I’m not sure yet,” I say, rubbing my eyes. I look up at her. “Oh, it must feel good to be so young and drink like a fish and not hurt all over the next morning.”

“Here,” she says, walking over to the couch. “Come sit on the floor and lean back on the sofa.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me,” she says. “I promise I’m not going to hurt you. Lying down is one of the worst things you can do when you have a bad hangover.”

“Please don’t try to pop my neck.”

“Oh goodness!” Avery says as she slides onto the sofa behind me. “Who in their right mind would try to pop someone’s neck?”

“I had a great-uncle who fancied himself an amateur chiropractor.”

“Did he paralyze anyone?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” I say.

“Popping bones is dangerous,” Avery says with authority. “Massage, however”—she places her hands on my shoulders and starts to rub—“is a different story. I bet you’ve been taking aspirin all morning, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I say, “and drinking lots of water.”

“Water is good,” she says in a motherly tone as she takes down my ponytail and combs through my hair with her fingers. “But this is better.”

I moan and groan as Avery massages my head, neck, back, and shoulders. Then she starts massaging my scalp and I feel sure I’m going to overdose on pure pleasure. She moves her fingers to my temples, then back down on my neck, and I don’t ever want her to stop, but she finally does.

“Avery!” I say, getting up off the floor. “You should think about setting up one of those funny-looking chairs at the mall.”

“Yeah, right,” she says, laughing. “So have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“I figured as much, so I picked you up something,” she says and pats me on the back. I pray a thousand little prayers she’s about to hand me a greasy brown bag from Bee Bop’s. “I picked it up at Eden’s Treats and I think you’ll really like it.”

No!
I think.
I need an effin’ cheeseburger!

“Thanks, Avery, that was very thoughtful.”

“Don’t worry,” she says, getting up, “it’s not a vegetarian dish. Eden’s does serve meat, well, chicken, and it’s cage-free, no hormones.”

“Okay,” I say and wonder what the hell difference it makes if a chicken lives in a cage or roams the prairies before being shipped off to the slaughterhouse. I guess happy chickens taste better.

Avery grabs two white bags off the counter and invites me to join her in the break room. I walk across the gallery like the bride of Frankenstein.

I fix us both some water, and she grabs two paper plates and unloads the bag. One rolled-up little thing for her and one rolled-up little thing for me.

Great.

I look down and don’t want to touch it, let alone eat it.

“It’s buffalo chicken,” she says.

“What’s buffalo chicken?” I ask, eyeballing the mysterious little thing on my plate.

“It’s a shredded buffalo chicken wrap,” she says enthusiastically, and I know that I’m going to have to eat this thing or it’s going to hurt her feelings. I pick it up and sniff it and Avery starts to laugh.

“There’s no ranch dressing,” I whine.

“No, but there is a celery stalk,” she says cheerfully.

“Hey, did you catch Olivia’s last name last night?” I ask, thinking if maybe I talk nonstop until she finishes her lunch, then she’ll leave and I can toss this giant rat pellet into the trash.

“Uh, no.” She thinks for a minute. “Tia didn’t say, did she?”

“Don’t think so.”

She looks at my alleged buffalo chicken wrap. “Just try it. You won’t die.”

Shit.

“I might, you never know,” I say, wondering if I could convince her that I was allergic to chicken that wasn’t still on the bone. She bores a hole into me with her exotic blue eyes, so finally I pick the damn thing up and take a bite, and much to my surprise, it’s good.

“Dang! This is tasty!” I exclaim.

“Told you,” she says and gets back to nibbling on what she claims is a veggie wrap.

After lunch, it doesn’t take much coaxing to get Avery to go upstairs and spend some time in her new studio. When it sounds like she’s good and settled in, I go lie back down on the sofa like she told me not to. I think about Tia and wonder why she wouldn’t mention that Olivia is Lenore Kennashaw’s daughter-in-law. Olivia doesn’t strike me as the type who would go for Lenore’s bull, but you never know about people when it comes to their families. Tia can’t stand Lenore any more than I can, so I can only assume that Olivia feels the same way or they wouldn’t be such good friends.

My cell phone rings and it’s Chloe again, so I pick it up and apologize for not calling her back. After a few minutes of polite chitchat, she tells me she’s thinking about buying a house.

“Okay,” I say. Just before I moved to Pelican Cove, Chloe divorced a horribly wicked man that I hated with a passion, and she’s been renting my grandmother’s house in Bugtussle ever since. “Are you about to get married?” I ask, thinking how great it would be if she married J. J. Jackson, the handsome and genteel sheriff of Bugtussle, Mississippi.

“No!” she says adamantly. “It’s a little too soon for that!” She goes on to explain how she’s never had a place of her own and that’s really what she wants right now.

“What will you do with the house if I move out?” she asks cautiously.

“I don’t know and it doesn’t matter, Chloe,” I tell her. “You’ve got to do what’s right for you. That’s all you need to be concerned with.”

“I don’t want to leave you in a tight spot.”

“You won’t leave me in a tight spot at all. Gramma Jones’s house was empty for two years back when we were in college, remember? Besides, that’ll be a great place to stay when I come back to Bugtussle for a visit, which I think is going to have to be sooner rather than later.”

“I’d be happy to show it for you if you decide to sell,” Chloe says, and although I haven’t even thought about what I’d do if she moved out, I immediately balk at that suggestion.

“I don’t want to sell it,” I say quickly.

“Okay, well, you don’t have to worry about it right now, because even if I wrote a check tomorrow, it would probably be the first of the year before I actually move out.”

“Have you found a place?” I ask, not even wanting to discuss putting my house on the market.

“Well, I’ve been looking around for a while, but nothing really caught my interest until this past weekend. Do you know John and Ginger Moon?”

“Yeah, I went to school with him and she’s from Corinth, right?”

“Yes, them. Well, he got transferred to Texas with his job, so they just put their house up for sale.”

“Don’t they live in that big white house on the lake?”

“That’s the place,” she squeaks, and I can tell she’s really excited.

“Wow, you would be crazy not to buy that place! It’s gorgeous!”

“I know! I want it so bad!”

“Well, go get it, my friend!” I say, genuinely excited for her. “I can’t wait to plan the housewarming party.”

“Oh, Ace, I was so afraid you would be mad at me for moving out of your house.”

“Chloe, you’re crazy. You’ve got to live
your
life, sweetheart. And you should probably get off the phone with me now and call your Realtor before someone else snatches that place up.”

“I think I’ll do that,” she says.

“Keep me posted,” I say.

We say our good-byes, and I hang up the phone knowing there is no way in hell that I’m selling my grandmother’s house in Bugtussle. It’s all I have left of my family, and I’m not getting rid of it. Not now. Not ever.

At five o’clock, Avery goes outside and fetches the
OPEN
sign. She can tell something is bothering me, but I chalk it up to the prolonged hangover. I don’t know if she buys that or if she’s just being polite, but she doesn’t say anything else. All I can think about is getting home and snuggling up on the sofa with Buster Loo.

I call Mason and ask him what time he’ll be home, and he tells me that it’s going to be after dinner. I wonder if he would’ve been able to come home on time had he not gone in late this morning because of me. I ask him if he needs some supper and he tells me that he and Connor are having pizza delivered. I ask about Allison and he tells me that she and Connor got into it at lunchtime and she left and went to Tallahassee for the weekend.

“So she’ll be back?” I ask, worried and thinking I should try harder to listen to her boring stories.

“Oh yeah,” he says, like it’s no big deal. “They do this every couple of months. She’ll be back at work on Monday.”

For some odd reason, I’m relieved to hear that. “Mason, is there anything I can do?” I ask him. “Make some copies, file some papers, anything?”

“Oh no, sweetie, it’s okay,” he says. “I just finished going over Mr. Marks’s foreclosure documents and, like I suspected, mistakes were made, so now we’re just doing research and getting ready to go to battle with these bastards.”

“Okay,” I say, praying he won’t elaborate any more than that. “Well, I guess I’ll go get a cheeseburger and head home, then.”

“All right, babe, see you later.”

“Hey!” I say. “Do you have to work tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” he says, slowly. “When we reopen this case, things are going to get nasty and we’ve got to be prepared.” He pauses. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” I say and tell myself that it has to be.

I drive to Bee Bop’s and get myself a double cheeseburger with bacon, an order of loaded tots, and a gigantic cherry limeade. I put the food in the backseat so I won’t touch it on the way home and then eat in the kitchen with Buster Loo perched next to my foot. He’s sitting up like a Coke bottle, waving his front paws, begging. When I’m finished, I offer him a dog treat, but he won’t go near it. Instead, he goes and sits by the garbage can where I just threw the Bee Bop’s bag and gives me that “I can’t believe you treat me this way” look.

I open the fridge and get him a piece of cheese, and that makes him happy, so he follows me into the living room and we snuggle up and watch TV until we both doze off.