“I like my answer better,” he challenges, the sweetness gone suddenly. I sigh with relief, because the dissonance was too hard.
“That’s because you’re a bit unhinged,” I say. Loudly, as I reach for my sundae and shove more chocolate goo in my mouth. “Go away, Steve.”
He cackles. It sounds like Dr. Evil, high on NyQuil. “I’m the unhinged one? You pretend to be a lesbian and double-cross your billionaire ex and I’m unhinged?”
“Double-cross?” Mom asks, curling her arm around her ice cream protectively. “Shannon double-crossed someone?”
He pauses and stands awkwardly. If Mom asks him to join us, all bets are off.
“She cozied up to Declan McCormick and slept with him to get some big accounts for her company. All while pretending to be a lesbian,” he declares. He’s wearing a simple white button-down shirt, khakis, and Crocs. Steve is the only man I know who insists that Crocs count as business casual wear. Sure. For nurses.
“How do you know she was pretending?” Mom asks. The catch in her voice makes the tops of my ears go hot. She’s up to something. I wish Chuckles were here, because I could read his frowns to understand better what Mom’s ulterior motive is. I’m on my own, though. No Kitty Radar in an ice cream shop.
“Because I dated her for two years and I would know if I had slept with a lesbian,” he replies, voice dripping with sarcasm thicker than the impenetrable layer of ego that he wraps himself in, like a forcefield of arrogance everyone else knows is invisible, but he thinks is Kevlar.
“How would you know if you slept with a lesbian?” Mom asks again. “Is a lesbian’s vagina a different texture? Do they use a code word during sex? Do they bring a U-Haul on the first date? Do they refuse to perform blow jobs on you?”
Steve’s jaw drops a little and he starts breathing through his mouth.
I keep mine shut and sit back, ready to watch Mom in all her glory. It’s kind of nice to watch her turn this on someone other than me.
“Uh, I, uh…” he says.
She turns to me with a pseudo-accusatory look on her face. “Shannon, is that why Steve was always so uptight? You wouldn’t play the flesh flute?”
Marshmallow cream comes flying out my nostrils as I choke to death. It’s a hell of a way to go. I imagine the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man greets you in heaven on a white cloud of fluff.
She points at me and grasps Steve’s arm. “See? She can do it with ice cream. I’d imagine that marshmallow cream tastes better than—”
“Mom!” I cough. I’m not rescuing Steve. I’m preserving my nasal passages, because if she makes another comment about fellatio I’m going to shoot hot fudge so far into my sinus cavity I’ll have yeast infections in my brain.
“My sex life is none of your business,” Steve says in a cold voice.
“I did,” I tell Mom, pretending Steve’s not here. “But let’s just say it wasn’t an even trade.”
Steve’s eyes fly so far open his irises look like they’re swimming in a bowl of cream. Marshmallow cream.
“You can’t talk about blow jobs with your mother! That’s…private,” he insists.
“Like feeding Jessica Coffin stories to tweet is private?” I say sweetly.
“So you went up the elevator but you wouldn’t go down,” Mom needles Steve.
“I…what? No, it’s not…I didn’t…you don’t…” Give up, I want to tell him. You’re just digging the hole deeper, and that’s just more rope Mom needs to get to lower the bucket of lotion to you.
She turns to me and pats my hand. “Poor thing. No wonder you didn’t fight him when he dumped you. It was a blessing. Being with a selfish, egotistical blowhard is one thing. But a selfish, egotistical blowhard who is bad in bed isn’t ever worth it.”
Steve looks like someone just removed his voice box with a corkscrew. His mouth opens and closes, his eyes jumping like little fleas trying to find a safe place to land. He’s struggling to think and speak and react and I get the distinct impression that this conversation is not going as planned.
“I did not say a word to Jessica,” he argues, eyes shrinking to tiny, piggish triangles. Ah—so he’s going to address that and ignore the giant sucking chest wound that Mom just gave him over his, well…giant suckage as a sex partner.
He’s hovering over us, shifting his weight from one hip to the other, and leaning down. A veritable tower of terror, I tell you. I am afraid for his dignity, which is about as likely to remain intact as a rock star’s t-shirt in a mosh pit.
“Someone fed her the story,” I retort.
“I’m not that someone.”
“Then it was Monica.”
He snorts. It makes him sound like a manatee. “My mother and Jessica aren’t close.”
“Monica isn’t capable of being close to anyone,” Mom says. “It would ruin her varnish.”
Steve frowns. “That’s my mother you’re insulting.”
“Yes,” Mom says. “It is.”
“Why did I even come over here?” he asks the air, waving his hands around as if he has an audience. Every single person in the store ignores him, because in the battle for attention between Steve and a giant peanut butter fudge sundae, he’s losing. Big time.
“We were wondering the same thing,” Mom and I say in unison.
“Maybe to apologize for being so selfish in bed with Shannon?” Mom adds in a voice that carries through the ice cream parlor at the exact moment the satellite radio station pauses between songs. Now Steve’s got all the attention he wants. And he clearly doesn’t want it.
“Dude,” says a college student, a guy sleeved with tattoos. “That’s sad,” he says as he walks out carrying a loaded ice cream cone the size of my cat’s head.
“Would you please tell your mother,” Steve hisses, bending down to whisper in my ear, “that I was not…that I…that she’s…”
This is the part where, for two long years, I anticipated what he wanted me to say and played puppy dog to whatever he wanted. I used to wag my tail and eagerly jump up and do what he wanted, including fetching the same stick 127 times in a row.
I got accustomed to being in a state of panic when my man was being challenged by someone else, especially when he was a douchebag who would take it out on me emotionally, later, when all the people who had a deep core that was strong enough to call him on his bull were gone. Conditioned to becoming the peacemaker, the neutralizer, she-who-must-appease-the-overinflated-ego-in-a-skinbag, I felt the cold flush of fear that he was going to overreact.