Thursday, July 15, 2010

Chapter 17 XXX

I was cleaning out Parke’s car one day when I noticed a book wedged under the back seat with a picture being used as a bookmark. I pulled it out to look at it. It was a picture of two people holding each other, obviously in love. I recognized one: Parke. And I was not the other woman. A jealous monster invaded my body.



Who was the woman? Why is Parke looking at her like that? And holy cow, can those babies be real?


I wanted to rewind, put the picture back in its book and out of my mind. Then she’d go away and fade back into The Land of People who Don’t Exist, where she’d lived before I saw the picture.


But I looked again. I admitted, she was pretty. Gorgeous actually. She had blond hair. Of course, she just had to have blond hair. She had nice teeth. Suddenly my teeth seemed yellow. The picture was taken at arm’s length forcing their bodies to press up against each other. Stop touching my man! I can see why jealousy is a sin because all of a sudden I was filled with rabid anger and envy. I was a mother bear protecting her cub. I looked down at my ring. Good, I wasn’t imagining things--Parke is mine, he chose me.


I stuck the picture in my pocket and decided to question Parke about it instead of torturing myself.


Later, I met him for lunch and after a quick kiss I got down to business. I pulled the picture out of my pocket.


“Who’s this?”


I was expecting him to shy away, look embarrassed, act discombobulated. But he took a bite of his sandwich and shrugged, answering as if I had asked him how the weather was.


“That’s Lexi. We dated before my mission.”


Lexi might as well been spelled LeXXXi because all I could think about was her ginormous breasts brushing up against Parke’s arm in the picture. He was probably heartbroken that they broke up. I studied his reaction. He didn’t seem heartbroken; he was engrossed in his sandwich.


“So how was class today, baby?” he asked, oblivious. Guys are so oblivious.


“HELLO?!? How come you’ve never mentioned Pamela Anderson? I need DE-TAILS.” (I was a little upset and the Valley Girl tends to come out when I get upset.)


He looked up, surprised that I was upset. Then he laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve really never mentioned Lexi?”


I just stared back with arms folded, lips pressed.


He laughed again. “OK, let’s see. We dated in the dorms. She was in my Chem class. See wrote to me on my mission.”


“I said DE-TAILS, not man facts.” I demanded.


He put down his sandwich. He was serious now and sincerely wanted to please me. “What do you want to know?”


“How long did you date? How serious were you? Did she wait for you? Where is she now? Do you ever talk to her?” And then there were the questions I wanted to ask, but didn’t: Am I a better kisser? How far did you go? Are the jugs real?


He looked up as if he were reaching into the dusty corners of his cerebrum. “We dated for 6 months before I went on my mission. I guess we were pretty serious because we wrote back and forth every month of my mission and talked about possibly getting married. Then when I came home I drove out to BYU see her. But things were different. We were both changed people. She started dating another guy and the rest is history.”


Each word made me cringe. But I was relieved to note that Parke was cool and detached while relaying the story. He didn’t seem affected by it in any way. Parke knew every morsel about my past relationships. But he never pressed me for details. If anything, the only detail that he wanted to know was what kind of Harley Gavin owned. He was so full of faith in our relationship. He trusted me. Parke was wildly protective of me, but not jealous (probably because he knew that I would NEVER leave him).


I just had to ask one more question to put my mind at ease. “Do you ever see or talk to her?” I winced.


“No”.


A better answer would have been: “Oh, yeah, I saw her the other day. She is very happily married. But she had gained, like, 100 pounds. Must’ve been from the having three kids in 3 years. Oh, and her boobs had shrunken down to size A’s; she was actually wearing a water bra that whole time.”


But I settled for “No”.


He could tell that I was distressed and said “Come here”. Oh, I just love when he says “Come here”.


I sat on his lap and he gave me a dizzying kiss that told me that I was the one, the only, woman in his life, then and always. I hoped that LeXXXi would find happiness someday (and a good physician who specializes in upper back pain) but, as far we were concerned, Lexi was lowered into the ground as we threw flowers on her casket.

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