It's Not About You (2 page)

Him
.
 

That time, I agreed.
 

We're done.
 

The divorce was still a few years coming—cause they are not cheap. And he was afraid I'd take custody.
 

The final papers were signed after she started college. And now ten months forward, I was staring at the label button on a website and wondering…
 

What would be my new Choose One?
 

Well…let's see.

Back then I chose all kinds of things. I chose to dye the gray out cause me with gray hair was messed up. And cut it. Short. Women my age with long hair…just too much trouble. Next, loose weight…where was that Jenny Craig ad? And after that…

Get out more. Don't be afraid. Live in the sunlight and not the shade of the house. I did all of those things and during that first Summer without my daughter (I'll get to why she wasn't there).
 

But at the end of it, I was alone and floundering. I couldn't stop thinking of myself as still newly divorced.
 

So there I was, at the beginning of September with another realization that I had to get out more than before, and that I had to stop thinking of myself as divorced and think of myself as…

Free.
 

So to celebrate my new choice, I bought waffle cone ice-cream, cause you know, diets work better on Monday. I'd had my apostrophe and I texted my child to let her know.
 

Mom, you gotta stop saying that. Class is starting. Luff u! :)
 

Little did I know choosing freedom would be so damn…
terrifying
.
 

Going back to the beginning of that summer after the divorce was final, it took me another month to get going on the changing me thing. I'm bad at procrastination. That and…I had a
lot
of work to do. On me.

The first was my body weight and shape. Changing this was easy compared to the emotional damage I didn't realize I had. But I'll get to that later.
 

I joined one of those we-ship-you-food diets and started at a local gym. Zoomba became my outlet for frustration and I dove into sexy dancing with everything I had. I didn't feel embarrassed about it since I took the early class and there were never more than six of us attending.
 

Since my meals came in packages I didn't think much about my diet, until my heart started beating a little weird during a Zoomba session. A trip to the doctor revealed my blood pressure was bad and when she reviewed what I was eating—I had to nix the prepackaged stuff. Who knew the sodium content was so bad?
 

So, I had to learn to cook that summer. And I had never been a good cook. I can't tell you how often my daughter cried uncle and offered to pop popcorn for dinner when she lived with me.
 

Once I got that package meal deal canceled, I used that money for healthy cooking lessons. Which I think was one of the best investments I ever talked myself into.
 

Because of my history with making decisions and carrying them out, I figured my new outlook as free and not divorced was going to take me a while. I still imagined myself as dumpy and fat and unhealthy.
 

And divorced.
 

It was hard to jump tracks when the one you've been riding on becomes so damn comfortable.
 

But everything changed when my daughter, two days after my apostrophe, announced she wasn't coming home for the summer but staying at school to work in the admissions office for the summer quarter. She wanted to help pay for fall quarter for her second year.
 

What was I going to say? No? Any bit of income would help 'cause getting a four year degree was highway robbery.
 

"I'm probably gonna go straight into the fall quarter mom, so I'm not sure if I'll be home between the two quarters. But Casey's mom said I could spend that time with them on Tybee Island."
 

I nearly fell apart. I was so devastated. I'd wrapped the last eighteen years of my life around that child and I needed her home with me at least some of the time. She'd been gone for a year to college, home only for Christmas and New Years and then between Winter and Spring quarters.
 

When I told Kyle that night, he promptly plied me with lots of food, lots of dessert and lots of wine.
 

Oh Kyle…I haven't mentioned him yet.
 

Kyle is that friend every woman wants. He's my gay. That's the only way I can put that. All my life I had gay friends and it never seemed odd to me. Hell, my first boyfriend was gay. How did I know back then? He liked wearing my lip gloss.
 

Clue!
 

Kyle and I met before I was married. And to be honest—I couldn't remember when or how. It just felt like he'd always been there. He was the one that warned me when the ex and I became engaged that Burt was a bastard, and he was the one that warned me when the first clues of the ex's narcissistic personality surfaced…and I didn't see them.
 

And he was still there. Through pregnancy, child rearing, divorce and Choose Freedom. Only now we saw a lot more of each other because he moved in with me sometime during my daughter's Spring quarter to help support me during what he called my "mid-woman crisis."

I still lived in the house I bought when I was pregnant. The one I'd refinanced after the divorce finalized (and I got custody of the house) so the payments were pretty much nothing.
 

It was two story. One of those houses that when you walk in, you make a decision of up or down. I called it Heaven or Hell. He lived in Hell, which consisted of a bathroom, living area, access to the basement and a bedroom.
 

I lived in Heaven…

Hell looked better because Kyle had better fashion sense than me.
 

As for personal relationships, he'd been through six breakups since the beginning of the year so he considered himself an expert when it came to calming hysterics.
 

Once I came to grips with the fact I wouldn't have my daughter to lean on, Kyle got busy whipping my ass in shape. His was already so well in shape I could bounce a quarter off of it.
 

Let me interject right here—Kyle is the body beautiful. He is
that guy
on the cover of bodice rippers. He's the chest you see on endless romance book covers. His face is chiseled and handsome, his washboard abs make my neighbors squeak, and his hair is thick and brown and sun-highlighted (with a little help from lemon juice). He'd recently cut it, getting tired of the ponytail in the heavy southern heat.
 

The shorter hair just made him look that much more beautiful. He was also the one that got me to join that gym, stick to Zoomba (he took it with me) and then started me on weights at his gym, which of course was a local meat market. I can't even count how many times I saw him being cruised and poked fun at him. The guy strutted around like he owned the joint. He was the King of
you-know-you-want-me
.

But when it came to spiders?
 

The body beautiful became a two year old girl. Damn the boy could scream.
 

Ask me about the bungee spider one day. You'll laugh your ass off.
 

The cooking idea? That was his too, so he took it with me. It became a Summer of workouts, a few beach trips and learning to cook. I literally remade myself in three months and before I knew it, September arrived.
 

Somewhere around September fifth, my daughter called and announced she was coming home for Thanksgiving break. Last year she'd gone home with one of her new friends and vowed never to do that again. But last year that was teen speak and yeah…they're fickle.
 

But this year, she
wanted
to come home.
 

I don't know why this news surprised me. I mean…we hadn't seen each other in five months!
 

"But…I don't want dad there. I mean I want to see him, but he'll just ruin things cause all he'll do is talk about his job and how bad it is and then complain about the food, the company, the weather. I want it to be an upbeat visit."
 

"You need to see him, though."
 

"Well…then he can come to Atlanta and he and I can spend time somewhere else. Is that okay? I mean…not inviting dad?"
 

I couldn't have agreed more.
 

Once I knew I was going to see my wonderkin, I became a flurry of activity. I'd been working on my body, but I needed to work on the house.
 

I hadn't done much to it. I still had some savings. Enough to kickstart making changes. I had a little over two months before she would arrive. Kyle was all on board for making a change upstairs. His half of the house was awesome. I mostly spent my time down there with him.
 

The first thing I did was paint. Everything. Kyle helped me choose colors and coordinate and talked me into doing a full on clean out. I caught the neighbor swooning when Kyle took his shirt off (it's still hot here in September) and hauled box after box of junkie crap out of the house to the curb.
 

Once the walls were painted and the furniture tossed, Ikea became my friend. That and a set of power tools Kyle invested in. And once we had the upstairs living and dining room cleaned, painted, re-furnitured and looking awesome, Kyle started on the kitchen. New sink, new counter tops and new appliances. I didn't want him to spend the money, but he assured me that if I ever moved to Oregon like I'd talked about since we met, he wanted the house.
 

We got everything done in just over a month. Six weeks left before my daughter unit would arrive—and I was flat broke.
 

I had killed every bit of savings I had.
 

Kyle was good for the house payment, as minimal as it was. But I had to contribute somehow. And if I didn't have money, how could I pay for her tuition next semester?
 

I needed a job.
 

But what exactly does a forty-something divorcé do? I hadn't worked a serious job in long time because the ex had supported us during her school years. But with the divorce finished, there was no more support.
 

As the ex still loved to call and remind me.
 

It was late in the evening when my Summer happy came to an abrupt, needle across vinyl stop. Kyle was on the couch flipping channels on the new flatscreen and I was at the new dinning room table with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution spread out to the job listings.
 

We were waiting on one of my masterpiece healthy lobster casseroles to finish baking. Kyle had uncorked a new bottle of red wine he wanted to try with it (I would be sticking to white wine) so it was sitting on the kitchen island. I had a bottled water beside me and we had both just spent a good hour at his gym. I think Kyle had three phone numbers in his pocket and he hadn't bothered looking at any of them.
 

Green beans steamed on the stove and the timer went off just as my phone did. I looked down at the caller.
 

Selfish Prick was calling. No really. That's what I programmed my ex's number to read.
 

Damn
.
 

I grabbed the phone as I got up to turn the beans off. I had the headphones still plugged in so I popped one in my ear, tucked the other down the front of my tee-shirt and slipped the phone in my back pocket.
 

I pinched the button on the wire under the earbud. "Murphy's Mortuary. You stab 'em, we slab 'em. Can I help you?" I turned the eye under the beans off and then dumped the beans in some waiting ice water to stop them from cooking.
 

The voice on the other side was curt and harsh. Like it always was. Ahh… good times. "You have to stop answering the phone like that. It's not funny."
 

"Sorry, Burt. But you don't call the shots anymore. Whaddayawant?"
 

Kyle turned and looked at me as he muted the television. His left brow arched in question and I held up a finger—our signal we'd worked out since the divorce that meant
let's wait a second
. Otherwise Kyle was going to grab the phone and speak his mind.
 

He loved doing that.
 

"I'm coming home for Thanksgiving."
 

I frowned as I processed that. "You're going to Florida? Why call and tell me that?"
 

"No. Georgia. To the house."
 

"My house?"
 

He sighed. "Fine.
Your
house. I'm coming to your house for Thanksgiving."
 

I motioned for Kyle to come close, removed the earbud and put Burt on speaker. Kyle was beside me in a second as I thumbed the home button and slid my finger to the side till I found the call recorder, turned it on, and set the phone on the counter. "Can you repeat that? I'm not sure I heard you right."