Chapter 11

The next four months were the longest of my life -- other than waiting for my daughter's birth while unemployed, in high school, and about to marry a lesbian.  Ah, the memories.  

Beep!  I saw from the phone number that Maria was calling.  I took a deep breath and tried to psych myself in.

"Domino's.  Is this for pickup or delivery?" I asked. Major pause.  I got worried she'd hang up.  "Maria?"  Then I heard an embarrassed laugh and knew I was still golden. 

You don't have to worry until you can't make her laugh. 

Only then are you screwed.

"You little shit, you got me again."  But she didn't sound pissed.  "I thought you'd be surprised to hear from me."

"I assumed I turned you lesbo like the last one."  It was so good to hear her laugh.  "Oh, it's okay.  I'm allowed to make fun of dykes since I married one.  By the same logic, I can also ridicule fat cheating bitches."

"I want to see you," she said and the beeper in my pants vibrated.  “I have a big surprise for you.”

"Don't have enough video?" I joked.  "Just tell me when and where and I'll try to fit you into my busy schedule."

"I'm emailing you right now.  I'd come to you, but Sheldon had me sell my car to compensate his daughter for taking him in."

No shit.  When the GPS I installed started driving cross country, I freaked out.  Thank God Alex hacked her phone, so I knew she hadn't moved, or I would have had a heart attack.  I checked my email.

"You want to have lunch today?  But I just got out of bed."  Uncomfortable pause.  "I'm kidding.  I can probably out-jog you now.  Let's race after lunch.  Loser gets it up the ass."  She suppressed a giggle, so I knew she didn't have a lot of privacy.  "No, serious, I need to shower after all that working out and beating off.  Traffic can be unpredictable in 

L.A., so I better get ready now."

"I miss you, mi amor.  See you soon.  Chao."

I hit the little red button and paced the room to work off the nervous energy.  My palms were sweating like armpits.  Fuck, I better beat off now so I don't greet her with a tent in my pants.  I felt as nervous as a teenager about to lose his virginity.

When I got to Subway, I found Maria already seated. Quiznos has better sandwiches, but whatever.  I entered and she stood up to show me her big surprise.

Woe!  I stared at her patting her bulging belly and almost fainted.  Something in the back of my mind warned me she would be scrutinizing my facial expression.  

“You’re so fat!” I joked to punish her for keeping her pregnancy from me.  I couldn‘t believe she didn‘t tell me.  I turned around and ran for the door.  Before stopping to see her reaction.  A look of horror transformed her face.  I immediately felt like shit.  Walking towards her with outstretched arms, I tried to reassure her.  “I sure hope the baby’s mine.”

“It better be.  Instead of telling me he had a vasectomy before we ever met, Sheldon lied about tying my tubes.  He figured -- probably correctly -- that I would only stay with him if I believed I couldn’t have children.  I also found out from his daughter that the lying bastard lost his medical license for popping pills.”

What the hell, I thought, and swept her up in a hug.  I could tell she was a wreck.  She never looked less hot, but my feelings for her were stronger than ever.  We had enough chemistry to build WMD.  We sat and she looked down at her sandwich.

"Sheldon finally passed away last night."

What was I suppose to say to that?  "About time?" 

"Fuck-in-a?"  "Did all my money go with him?" Think, Abe, think!  “Can I pee on his grave?”

She smiled and slapped my hand reproachfully.  “I have a little girl inside me.”

“I bet she’s beautiful like her mother.”

Maria’s face fell.  “I’m not hot anymore.”

“Of course you are.  Let’s go to the bathroom and I’ll prove it.”

That made her smile.  “Oh, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.  I’ve never masturbated so much in my life.”

“You beat off thinking of me?”  I didn’t try to keep the astonishment out of my voice, despite the nasty look the food preparer gave me.  It never crossed my mind that superhot chicks masturbated.  Much less to me.  “You’ve heard of 

G****e, yet still beat off to me?”

“I’d drink milk pretending it was your juice.  I must have gone through a gallon a day these past few months.” “Me, too,” I said, gesturing like I was beating off.

“You’ve made me cum more in a few months than I have cum the previous ten years.  You want to fuck me so bad that I get hot just thinking of our next time together.  I’m so wet right now I squish when I walk.”

“Can we put that on a billboard?  I’ve a high school reunion coming up.”

Maria laughed and I couldn’t believe my good fortune.  And here I worried my penis would get me into trouble.  I need to stop reading Cosmopolitan.

“The funeral is Friday, but Sheldon didn't want you to go.  In fact, he was real bitchy about it."

"He still mad about my dead roses?"

She paused awfully long.  "I couldn't cheat on him, so I had to ask him for permission to accept your proposal. He preferred that to me stripping again.  And it paid better, which is what he really cared about."

"He pimped you out?"  I was shocked.  "And I felt guilty this whole time?  But I thought you two were totally in love."

Grief must have slowed her ability to speak, because I wanted answers a lot faster than she was providing them. It’s weird how love can warp time.  No wonder they haven’t found a unified theory yet.  I need to email Scientific American to share my discovery.

"I cared for him very much, but he dismissed it as hero worship.  He cared for me, but often treated me like dirt.  When he lapsed six years ago, he pushed me into stripping.  He used to go there just to see me entertain other customers.  He really got off on it.  I never prostituted myself like the other girls, but he probably would have gone along with that, if it paid his bills."

My jaw nearly dropped on her Philly cheese steak. The one without steak.  I now understand why she didn't tell me this earlier.  I would have beat him to death. 

"I thought maybe we could spend some time together. See what it's like, with him gone.  I could never decide how I felt towards you with him rubbing the sex into my face every day.  He became so cruel.  It just made me want to fuck you all the more, until I became insatiable.  At the end he wanted me to promise to never fuck anyone ever again."

"And did you promise?" I asked, horrified.

"Oh, no.  I told him to go to hell and stopped his morning blowjob.  How could I give up deep dicking after enjoying it for so long?  He pissed me off so much that I gave him a laptop with our pictures and videos for our tenth anniversary.  You know what he gave me?  A vibrator so I could go fuck myself.  I was his wife, but he treated me like a mistress, while I was your mistress, but you treated me like your wife."

I guess she never saw how I treated my wife.  "Did he look at the videos?"

"I never asked, but his granddaughter says he worked on that laptop whenever I wasn't there."

"But now you're ready to move on?"

"Oh, I can't wait to move on.  I gave that cruel bastard ten years of my youth that I'll never get back.  I laughed more with you in two months than with him in ten years.  I never knew what I was missing.” "Kiss me," I said.

"Where?" she asked slyly.

"Right here in Subway."

She scooted closer, looking as uncomfortable as a virgin, a huge twitching smile crowding out the rest of her face.

“Nervous?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes, damn you!” she said, laughing.

That first kiss was magic.  It had all the electricity of a lightning strike with all the flavor of a smoothie.  Her tongue didn’t intrude into my mouth so much as return home after a long vacation.  Oh, jeez, I really did feel like a virgin. Good thing I wore tight jeans or my dick would have coldcocked me.  Nothing in my life prepared me for this.  My heart leapt into my throat, eager for her tongue to caress it. Something lifted up the table like a poltergeist and I panicked, thinking it was my penis, but it was only the baby foretelling how much she would intrude on our sex life.  The kiss didn’t end so much as reach completion.  It was the perfect kiss.  Well, if her breathe didn’t taste like mustard, it would have been.

When I recovered, I saw her staring at me with awe. I actually looked behind me, expecting to see a naked p**n star but, no, Maria was just seeing me with new eyes. I could tell she needed more deep dicking, but I wanted to know if her feelings were more than sexual. And financial.

"Do you love me?" I asked.  That broke her trance. Her confusion hurt me.  I could feel a knife in my heart, ready to saw it in two.  When she didn't answer right away, I twisted a knife of my own.  "Because there's a new girl in my life."

That dropped the temperature ten degrees.  She flared her teeth like a vampire and her fingernails raked my arm deep enough to draw blood.  "Is she cuter than me?" Maria asked, scared, as if another woman could possibly compare to her.  She apparently had no idea that she ruined me for other women.  My son urged me to fuck newly divorced mothers, but I just couldn’t find enough interest.

"Oh, the usual virgin supermodel nympho.  You wanna see her picture?  She looks like a younger version of you."

Oooh, her eyes popped.  So I reached into my wallet slowly, while studying her reaction.  She must have a nuke in her purse because I suddenly detected intense gamma radiation.  I covertly folded the picture below the table, then showed her Mariana.  And Maria freaked.  I mean total shock.  Her hair practically stood up.  Her eyes bugged out of her skull.  Her facial expression transformed and I wondered if the Hulk had Colombian children.  Something lodged in her throat and I thought she was going to projectile-vomit her steak sandwich at me.

Now I freaked.  I unfolded the picture so she could see Alex's arm around the hottie.  "She's my son's girlfriend. I'm not seeing anyone.”  I found myself backing up faster than Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk.  “I'm sorry, but you said you wanted to know what your true feelings for me were."

I thought she was going to hit me.  Or explode. 

Maybe fart, given her facial expression.  Instead she marched to the bathroom.  And she did kind of squish, which even the sandwich lady thought weird.  Then she had to walk back to ask the sandwich maker for the fucking key.  Did I just fuck up the best opportunity of my life?

I didn't hear her return since I was still banging my head against the table.  Her laugh brought me back to reality. Or whatever the Twilight Zone was doing to me.  She smiled at me and I nearly shat myself from sheer relief.  "You had to fart, didn't you?" I joked.

"Actually, I thought I peed myself."

“Well, that would explain the squishing sound.” 

She laughed, like she used to laugh, and my hopes soared.  "Abe, you scared the hell out of me.  Yes, I love you, you fucking asshole.  I’ve known it since that first time you slept over.  I knew it when I couldn’t stop staring at you, or stop thinking how life would be with you.  But Sheldon threatened to ruin me if I ever told you.”

“You know, I never thought I’d win any contests as a husband, but yours was a huge asshole.  He should be a doctoral project for proctologists-in-training.”

“I am so sorry.  I swear I will make it up to you.”

“Well, I’m divorced, so you can’t be my mistress anymore.  What do you propose?”

“Marry me, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”

If you’ve never seen a blown mind, ask Subway to show you the footage of me staring at her like a fish on a plate.  My mouth made an “O” like I had a quarter stuck in my teeth.  I don’t know how she ever kissed me again after that.  She swears she remembers how I looked, yet still finds me attractive.  Go figure.

“Now we have both pissed ourselves.”

“Your billboard is practically writing itself.”

“Smart ass,” I said, smiling like a statue of a Greek god.

“Better pissed off than pissed on.” Touché. 

If I’ve learned anything, it’s this: when life throws you lemonade, drink the fuck up.  I stumbled around in my pocket for the massive engagement ring I bought months ago -- you know, just in case -- and got on one knee.

“Maria, I want to be with you, only you, and with you forever.  I want to grow old with you and make you happy for the rest of my life.  Will you marry me?”

I shit you not, she jumped up and down and clapped her hands like she won the lottery.  I couldn’t fucking believe it -- I defied the odds and made a woman happy.  If for only a moment.  Or maybe she was just doing jumping jacks for the exercise.

“Yes, you awesome bastard.  Yes, I will marry you.  I want to spend the rest of my life with you, only you, and with you forever.”

She pulled me up and we hugged and sobbed and cried and must have scared that old couple that walked in, for they ran out in a full sprint.

"Let's go home, girlfriend.”

"You always know just what to say.”

THE END