#TripleX Read Free Page A

ankles.”
    “Oh Heavens—alright, go on. I have a full docket. I don’t have all day,” the judge urges. She looks at me with wide pleading eyes; she’s engrossed in the story, so I just shrug and continue.
     
     
    Anyway, I made sure to point out that Skinny McLatte was more of a pig than I could ever be, since she was the one having a secret relationship with someone else’s husband. I was just overweight. What I did was not morally incorrect; it only hurt me.
    There was nothing I could do but throw my damn box of Twinkies at them, and realize she could have him. I’ll tell you why, because in that agonizing moment right after my heart was ripped out of my chest, our entire relationship flashed before my eyes and most of it was me always wanting more, always waiting, and always cleaning up messes. I was tired of being unappreciated; let it be his turn now to feel loss. I was done. I had given up so much for my husband and my family, though no one seemed to realize that.
    I didn’t want to mourn for the person I was. I didn’t want to be twenty-something and back to my tiny before-kids body and relive every mistake I made. What a useless fantasy that would be, there’s no going backward only forward. I wanted to be me, as I am, only shined up a bit, the best me I could come up with.
    I stormed out of his office. The walk to that front door was the hardest thing my ego had ever had to endure. Everyone in that office was standing up in their little cage-like cubicles, peeking over the walls to watch the most hurtful humiliating event in my life. Tears poured down my cheeks, and by the time I reached the exit, loud uncontrollable sobs escaped my lips. I will never forget their faces. How each one of those people looked at me as I made that walk of shame through their gauntlet of sympathetic stares. Worse yet, I’ll never forget the way my husband’s face looked as he gave himself to another woman. He hadn’t looked like that at me for years.
    I dragged myself to my car and locked myself in. Then, I completely broke down. Tears and snot everywhere. I’m ashamed to say that I stayed for a good thirty minutes, sitting in my car, watching that door. The boy I fell in love with all those years ago would have run out after me. He would have begged me to forgive him, and promised never to hurt me again.
    Maybe not.
    No, definitely not.
    That boy I fell in love with when I was eighteen would have never hurt me like this. I was his world—he was mine. That man in there with that woman wasn’t the boy I’d fallen in love with, not anymore.
    The boy I loved was gone.
    After a few well-deserved days of mourning for the death of my marriage, I called Angelisa. “I know I have to make a change. My butt knocks things over that I’m just not near, and I need to get laid,” I relayed the entire tragic story of my oldnes s, weight gain , and sudden loss of regular bi-monthly boring sex.
    “He really told you that you read too much?” she asked, apparently the only thing she was surprised by.
    “The man had a complaint for everything I had ever done, right or wrong. It doesn’t matter now, right from his office I hit the lawyer’s office, and I had the divorce papers drawn up. The End. And honestly, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
    “Oookay.”
    “Because, seriously, I’m too old to waste any more time on it.”
    “You aren’t old.”
    “You’re just saying that because we’re the same age and if I’m old that would mean you’re old too. Anyway, I have a proposition for you. You are going to want to say no, but you can’t.”
    “Hit me with it, I’m listening,” she said.
    I positioned my phone closer to my mouth; this was a serious situation, “Remember that book signing that we both wanted to go to in Vegas at the end of the summer?”
    “Yeah…”
    “We’re going. I’m picking you up in a few days,” I announced.
    “Wait. Huh? It’s May. The signing isn’t until the end of