Chapter 4

My bastard ex loves chocolate. He can't avoid it no matter what you do. It's like an obsessive compulsion with him. I don't mean a little cube here and there; I mean after his first taste, he's got to eat a couple of bars until he's anywhere near satisfied.

Do you know what looks like chocolate? Uh-huh! I overheard a conversation on the phone between him and little Ms. Hotpants. He'd fired her from the part-time job at his business and apparently was no longer seeing her because he was trying to convince the idiot judge that he wanted to reconcile.

Now, no one knows about the reason for her being fired, and I haven't said a peep just yet since I'm waiting for the right time, place, and opportunity, aka, I'm waiting for my check to clear. From his side of the conversation, she needed to see him for closure. The only closure she needed to be thinking about was the closure of her slut legs, but I digress.

Apparently, he decided to go see her the next day, so I set my plan in motion. That morning, I woke up and chose pettiness. I didn't go downstairs right away, but the special chocolate I left out on the counter the night before was gone when I arrived, and so was he.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but he duck-walked his ass back inside the house less than an hour later. I held my nose as he went by me and kept reading my book. He came charging back down the stairs half an hour later and stomped his ass over my way.

"What did you feed me you….?" He grabbed his ass and high-tailed it the hell out of my face again. We played out that same scenario a couple more times until he got some sense in his head and stayed the hell on the toilet and away from me.

He about sounded like he was going to die when I passed by the bathroom door singing some ditty at the top of my voice. He played ass tag with the porcelain bowl all day and well into the night. At one point, he claimed that he was dehydrated, but when I put the Pedialyte on the table, he eyed it like it was Hades' ball juice and wouldn't touch it.

I'm sure he thought I'd messed with it, and I knew he'd think that; that's the only reason I offered it in the first place. He got the bright idea to call my kids to complain, but I guess they're still not talking to him because all he got was the answering machines for each of them.

Even Devon, who was always his shadow, couldn't be bothered. I'd asked the kids to stay away for a little bit, though they kicked up a fuss about wanting to be here for me. But as their mom, I can't have them in the middle of this mess. Their whole lives were being turned upside down because of this man's selfishness, and I know that in the back of their minds, they're hoping we work things out.

Since I know there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that that's going to happen, I don't want them getting their hopes up. Plus, they should be having fun with their friends on campus and not worrying about me since I wasn't worried about myself. If not for the idiot judge, I would be on a cruise somewhere already; all he did was prolong the inevitable, and now I have to make new travel plans.

The one good thing about this whole mess is that I've been able to keep it contained. I swore my kids to secrecy even though Todd wanted to find the skank and put her in her place, and Sheila promised not to kill anyone until I gave her the go-ahead. I'm not even sure if Kevin told hot crotch the reason for her being fired. I think he might've told her that they should cool it before I found out.

He obviously didn't tell anyone about the divorce since he made a dang fool of himself in the courthouse to stay married. But now that I think about it, this is way more fun than if I'd just taken his money and ran. That judge just signed his ass up for six months of revenge, and the cherry on top, he"s the one who'd asked for it.

Later that evening, since Jonathan, her husband, was out of town on business, Sheila and I decided to go out on the town. "Where the hell are you going dressed like that?" I walked back into the bathroom from the walk-in closet to put the finishing touches on my makeup, completely ignoring him.

He followed me in like the rube that he is and started grumbling at me, knowing damn good and well that I hadn't said a word to him in English since I found out about his affair. I kept adding more lipstick to my already red lips, spritzed myself with some come-and-get-it, and sailed out the door, making sure not to touch him since he'd planted his ass in my way. Probably have cooties.

I knew he would be on my ass, but I had one more trick up my sleeve. I waited until he was right there behind me with his shit and picked up my phone to call the third party in our little outing. "Pressy, you ready?" Now, Pressy is Anne's Daddy, short for Preston. You see, he left his wife a couple of years ago because she screwed her way through half the town, and he found out. That apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Something else about Pressy? He's always had the hots for me since middle school. Of course, it was just a childhood crush that he'd grown out of, and we'd joked about it here and there when the kids became friends, and neither of us was low enough to cheat on our spouse. But hey, he's free, and I soon will be; why not?

I'm not trying to date the poor man. Unlike my husband, I wouldn't cheat on my vows, but Pressy has always been a friend, and since he'd moved away for a while and was only now back, I thought it would be fun to catch up.

Oh, who am I kidding? I wanted exactly what happened to happen. Kevin damn near had an aneurysm after I hung up the phone. "You can't go out with Preston Thorpe. I forbid you…. I'm talking to you; get back here." I didn't hear anything he said after that because I'd walked out the door and closed it.

He pulled it open almost immediately, and Sheila was there, ready for his ass. Now this county is a carry county; the state says concealed, but we don't play that shit around here. We wear our merchandise for all the world to see. So's, you know that if you run up, you might get done up. When he saw her grand pappy's big old ugly shotgun, and she pulled back the chamber, he skidded to a halt in the doorway while I kept heading down the stairs to her red Mustang convertible.

"Ooh, girlie looking good. I ain't seen your tits since college." I have to find saner friends. But she ain't never lying. It's been a while since I wore anything like this. Not that I dressed like an old frump, mind you. But a mother of four shouldn't be caught dead in the knee-length floral number with the neckline that came down to my navel.

The damn three-inch heels made me feel like a NYC hooker, but they did wonders for my calves. I felt and looked like a young twenty-something, and there was no shame. A mother maybe shouldn't dress like that, but a new divorcee sure the hell could. And no matter what that withered-nose asshole judge says, my divorce was final the day my husband told the eighteen-year-old that he loved her.