The Good Life (15 page)

Later on that evening, we moved to a karaoke bar and three of the girls put in a slip for the exact same song without knowing it (“Redneck Woman” by Gretchen Wilson). Like a parody in a satirical film, each one performed the song as if she was a hot country star on a world tour – complete with hip swaying, hair flipping and coy smiles at the audience. There were even a few winks involved. Maybe it was the lemon drop shot I’d just swallowed, but the whole scene was nauseating. If any of those girls ever went down south and saw what a
real
redneck was, they would not be acting like it was a cute thing.

We had ended our barhopping at The Bar and when Jake got off work, he drove my drunken ass to an empty parking lot by the airport so we could be alone on our last night together. I told him I was happy to go back to North Carolina because being around all of the clones in Ann Arbor was starting to give me a complex.

“Did you notice that every girl I was with had on a sweater except me?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, thoughtfully. “I didn’t notice anyone except you.”

I didn’t need to worry about being the outcast at my divorce party though. I finally fit in after all these years. Just about every other woman at The Bar was wearing a miniskirt. And mine was on the longer side compared to the others. I’m pretty sure I saw a couple of tampon strings!

Surprisingly enough, the fact that I looked like everyone else didn’t make any difference to my inferiority complex. I still felt awkward for at least the first hour. But Jake kept giving me drinks, and pretty soon my panties were in my purse and I was leaning over the bar to tell him I wasn’t wearing anything under my skirt.

“I see you haven’t changed any,” he said with a crooked smile, as he poured shots on the bar.

It was a simple statement, but it meant a lot to me because it meant Hope’s experiment worked. She said I had to fake it. If Jake thought I was still the person he used to know, I was doing a good job. There might be hope for me after all because I felt fabulous. Or maybe that was the alcohol talking.

In one night I accomplished: GLL Challenge #8 – Wear a miniskirt in public with no underwear on; GLL Challenge #9 – Tell someone (preferably someone you’re attracted to) that you’re not wearing any underwear; GLL Challenge #20 – Get drunk; and #24 – Make out with a stranger. I don’t even remember his name. I’m not sure I ever knew it.

Even though The Bar didn’t have karaoke, that didn’t stop me from screaming, I mean singing, Pink’s “So What” loud enough to be heard over the music from the jukebox. My friends joined in right away and then a few girls from the other end of the bar started singing, too. That was Challenge #18 – Start a sing-a-long in public, and get at least one other person, a stranger, to sing along.

I also crossed off #2 – Get thrown out of a bar. Even though I wasn’t escorted out, Jake
did
cut me off at one point, and that’s basically the same thing, right?

Things were a bit blurry after that. I vaguely remembered Jake asking if I was making out with guys to make him jealous. He said it with a smile, though, so I would know he was teasing me.

“Do I even have the ability to make you jealous anymore?” I asked. At least that’s what I think I said.

I’m pretty sure he answered by saying, “You’ll always be able to make me jealous, Little Girl.” But, thanks to the alcohol, I can’t be sure. Maybe I dreamed it.

I honestly don’t remember a whole lot more than that. It’s probably best if I don’t.

I got pretty lonely after the divorce party. With the kids out of school for the summer, Allison had her hands full, and I had trouble dealing with the noise and commotion over there. Adam practically lived at the hospital. Jake was around for small pockets of time but he was usually on his computer working on his pictures and marketing his business.

I was supposed to be looking for a job, but I still felt scarred from the Skank Queen incident, and so I focused on volunteering to help others instead. I fulfilled GLL Challenge #25 by volunteering at a homeless shelter. I washed sheets and made beds and also donated a bunch of my expensive beauty products to the homeless women. I hoped to go a few times a month.

Even though it wasn’t on the GLL, I’d also gone to Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America to request a little sister to mentor. Since I couldn’t start my Social Work studies for another year, I thought a little sister would help keep me motivated. After a process of interviews, background checks, reference checks and drug screenings, they finally found me a little sister.

The info I was given was that she was thirteen, her name was Violet, she had been born to a teen mom, didn’t know who her father was and had been raised by her grandma while her mom was off whoring around – under the pretense of trying to find a father figure for her daughter, of course. Seriously, I’m not making this up. Sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason.

The girl had started to act out by talking back to her grandma, getting in trouble in school and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Grandma was worried and contacted BBBSA. That’s where I came in. I was supposed to hang out with her twice a month and try to show her different ways to enjoy life that didn’t involve getting into trouble.

We’d already had one session together and I thought it went well. Since I knew she was in the art club at her school, I took her to an art gallery and then a carnival. I could tell she was a good kid, and my guess was that her bad behavior was influenced by this new group of friends she had. Saving Violet from a life of STDs, teenage pregnancies and drug use was my new goal for the summer.

Aside from saving Violet, I didn’t do very much during my first few weeks back in Michigan. I sent in a few resumes via email for jobs that were way out of my league, just to say I was looking, but I wasn’t putting any real effort into it. I wasn’t putting much of an effort into anything. Most days I just hung around at home in my loungewear. My brother and Jake would make asshole comments about me wearing my pajamas all day but my clothes were from the “loungewear” section of the stores, and they were made specifically for laziness. There was no point in putting on cute clothes if I wasn’t going anywhere, right? I knew people on TV were always dressed up with full hair and makeup when someone randomly and without invitation knocked on their doors. But in real life, people don’t knock on your door out of the blue except Jehovah’s Witnesses; therefore, in real life, people don’t get dressed up and do their hair and makeup just to sit around the house. Correct?

Sometimes I stayed in my room all day and watched
Dawson’s Creek
on Netflix. Every couple of days, when we were out of food, I’d put on some jeans, throw my hair up in a lazy ponytail (not the cool kind) and go to the grocery store. I didn’t like using the oven in the summer, so I usually threw something into the slow cooker instead. The food would always disappear, so I was pretty sure the guys appreciated it. But even I knew my life had rapidly turned into a depressing scene.

It was nearing the end of June, the middle of the afternoon, and I was sitting on the couch eating ice cream directly out of the carton like a total cliché. I was watching a small-claims courtroom TV show about a pair of ex-roommates fighting over an electric bill. It had been at least three days since I’d washed my hair, and I was pretty certain that if I took the rubber band out, my ponytail would stay in place.

I was on the edge of my seat watching the judge yell at the two ladies on the television and hadn’t noticed that Jake was in the room until he cleared his throat.

I looked over to see that he had taped a banner over the archway of the living room that said “Intervention.”

I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. There’s an episode of
How I Met Your Mother
that deals with an intervention banner, and it’s some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen. Jake tried to hide his smile and look stern, but I could tell he thought he was pretty amusing, too.

He pointed at me and twirled his finger around the living room. “This,” he said, “has gone on long enough.”

I played innocent. “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “We’re all worried. It’s time for you to stop moping around, get off the couch, take a shower and
do
something.”

“Do what? What am I supposed to do?”

“Show me your lingerie.” He sounded dead serious.

“Huh?!”

“You need something to do, and I need a model. I tried looking on Craigslist but everyone I found was pretty trashy and wanted too much money up front.”

“You want to take pictures of me in my underwear?”

“Yes.”

“And what would you do with these pictures?”

“Put them on my website, blog and Facebook pages.”

I gasped. “Yeah right! I’m not an underwear model, Jake!”

He sat down on the ottoman in front of me. “Look, it is my job as a photographer to make you look good. I won’t even show your face. But I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t think you were good enough.”

Hmm. If he could Photoshop me to look good and no one could see my face, what was the harm?

“For every boudoir session I book in the next two weeks I’ll give you half the session fee.”

Even better! “Okay,” I said uncertainly. “Do I have time to get ready? I’d like to at least get a pedicure and a haircut.” And definitely a wax, but I didn’t mention that part.

He laughed a little. “Yes, please do. Because there isn’t much I could do to make you look good right now.”

I playfully punched his arm. “Thanks!”

“No problem. We’ll do the shoot tomorrow. Indoor pics at seven and we’ll go outside about eight. I get the best natural light an hour before sunset.”

“I don’t really have any lingerie though. Not like corsets or garter belts or anything like that.” I threw away all of that stuff before I left New York. I didn’t want to hang on to any reminders of how hard I had to work to get my husband to have sex with me.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Just some sexy underwear and stilettos will work – a few different sets. If you have thigh-highs or long necklaces we’ll use those, too.”

“I guess I better start making some appointments then.”

I turned off the TV and stood up. He smirked at me and ripped the banner off the wall.

“See ya tomorrow, Little Girl.”

I really got my ass into gear after he left the room, and I meant that literally. I showered, shaved and exfoliated. I then headed to a salon and got a Brazilian wax, a spray tan, a manicure and a pedicure.

The next morning I washed all my bedding and cleaned my room up just in case he wanted to use my room for the shoot. I got my hair cut, dyed and styled and had a professional smoky-eye make-up application done at the salon. Even though I did have some cute underwear of my own, I stopped at a sex store after the salon to pick up some
really
cute underwear with ruffles on the butt. I used to have a pair of ruffled underwear back during
The Summer of Jake and Roxie
and he had loved them so I figured he’d appreciate this pair, too.

Jake sent a text that said he’d meet me in my bedroom at seven. I would be a liar if I said that didn’t light the dynamite in my belly again.

I wore my kimono robe over my underwear. For my first outfit I wore a white bra and the white ruffled panties. I thought the color looked good with my tan. I added several long black necklaces of different textures and a pair of nude patent leather peep-toes. Even though he asked for thigh-highs I thought white would look too bridal and black would look tacky so I kept those in the lingerie drawer.

He arrived at seven as promised. He was very professional. He came in and started rearranging my furniture and bedding and curtains and setting up lights until he had the look he wanted. He took some test shots of me with my robe still on. I lied on the bed with my feet towards the window and he took the pictures from behind my head.

When I took the robe off he never missed a beat – just kept clicking away. There wasn’t any eye contact between us because of the angles he was shooting from so, while I couldn’t be sure, he didn’t seem to be filled with desire. He could have been photographing a fruit bowl instead of a barely dressed person with whom he used to have awesome sex with.

There was a small, very tiny, like practically microscopic, part of me that was hoping he’d drop his camera as soon as I dropped my robe, throw me onto the bed and rip those ruffles right off my butt. And even if he didn’t, I wanted him to
want
to. Just because it had been so long since anyone had wanted me. I thought it would be a nice feeling. But no, nothing like that happened.

When he was done with the first outfit, I went into the bathroom and changed into pale pink cashmere panties and a matching sweater. He said he wanted elegant and what’s more elegant than cashmere? Besides, I paid a fortune for the set years ago and never had an occasion to wear it, so I was very excited to start getting some of my money’s worth.

He took a lot of shots from behind in that outfit. Standing up in front of the window, lying on my belly, kneeling on the bed, all from behind.