Futures and Frosting (5 page)

Carter laughs
nervously and backs away. “No, why would you think that?”

Gavin stops
bouncing on the bed and looks at Carter.

“Yes you did, Daddy. 
Don’t you wemember?  Big Pussy cried and you called him a pansy-ass,” he says
earnestly.

I look at Carter
pointedly.

“And tell me you
didn’t take him out in public today with that shirt on.”

We both look at
Gavin’s shirt that boldly states, “They shake me.”

“I can neither
confirm nor deny those rumors,” Carter says as he sits down next to me on the
bed so he can put his shoes on.  “Let’s just say we had lunch with Uncle Drew,
and if I didn’t put the new shirt on Gavin that he bought him, there would have
been a scene.”

“I’m pretty sure
Gavin would have been fine if you refrained from putting him in that shirt,” I
tell him.

“I’m not talking
about Gavin.  Have you
met
Drew?”

Gavin takes a
leap off of the bed and runs out of the room.  I scoot closer to Carter and
rest my head on his shoulder.  He lifts one arm and wraps it around my
shoulder, pulling me against his side.  He seems okay right now, so I figure
there is no need to ruin the moment and ask him what his problem has been the
past few days and if he still loves me.

“Sometimes I
really hate that you work nights,” I tell him softly, wrapping my arms around
his waist.

He turns and
kisses me, easing both of us back onto the bed so we are laying in a tangle of
legs and arms.

“You don’t have
to lie. I know you like the peace and quiet during the week and having control
over the remote,” he says with a smile as he brushes a piece of hair out of my
eyes.

“You’re right, I
do.  But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.  It just means
'The Real
Housewives of Orange County'
can be watched without eye rolls and sarcastic
comments.  If anyone is going to judge Gretchen and Slade for their poor life
choices it will be me,” I explain.

“Oh, that
reminds me.  I’ve got something for you,” he says as he pulled his arms out
from around me and rolls onto his back so he can dig into the pocket of his
jeans.

“Are you going
to tell me that you have a present in your pants for me?  Because I’ve got to
tell you, I’ve been to that pants party a bunch of times.  I almost got a concussion
last time.”

Carter digs
deeper into his pocket and huffs at me.

“It is not my
fault I was unprepared for road-head.  I thought you weren’t feeling good and
were just going to put your head down in my lap.  When a man’s penis suddenly
makes an appearance in a moving vehicle on a Saturday night, an involuntary hip
thrust WILL HAPPEN.”

He finally pulls
his hand out of his pocket and holds it out to me, palm up.

“This is your
present,” he says to me.

I look into his
hand to see two small, orange, bell-shaped pieces of foam resting inside of a
tiny plastic bag.  I look at them quizzically trying to decide the correct
response one should have when receiving something that looked like dresses for
Polly Pocket dolls.

“Um, you
shouldn’t have?”

Carter laughs at
my obvious confusion.

“Oh I should
have.  Especially if I want to live through another night of sleeping next to
you.  These, my dear, are the best earplugs ever.  They have bins and bins of
them at work.  If you like them, let me know and I’ll bring a bunch more home.”

He got me
earplugs.  He really DOES love me.

I take the bag
from his hand and tear open the plastic with my teeth so I can pull the squishy
orange plugs out and look them over.  I roll one between my finger and thumb to
shrink it, and then I push it into my ear.

I repeat the
process with the other one and lie perfectly still as the foam slowly expanded
until I can’t hear a single sound except for the
whoosh
of my breathing.

“THANK YOU SO
MUCH, THESE ARE PERFECT!” I tell him.

At least I
assume that’s what I said.  To me it had sounded more like the teacher in a
Charlie Brown cartoon.

Carter smiles
and I see his mouth move.

“WHAT?”

His mouth moves
again.

Does he not
understand the concept of earplugs?  The word itself is pretty
self-explanatory.  Ear.  Plug.  From the Latin root, “I can’t hear a fucking
thing that is coming out of your mouth.”

I stick my
finger in my ear and yank one of the plugs out.

“As I was
saying, you’re welcome.  I have to go to work now.  Does this ensure that I can
go to sleep from now on knowing all of my appendages will still be attached
when I wake up?”

He pushes
himself up off of the bed, and I pull the other ear plug out and toss them both
on my nightstand so I can follow him out of the room.

“I do solemnly
swear not to Lorena Bobbet your penis,” I tell him as we make our way down the
hall and out into the living room.

Carter says a
quick good-bye to Gavin who is sitting on the couch watching cartoons and then
grabs his work bag off of the floor beside the front door.

“Don’t forget
Liz and Jim’s co-ed pre-wedding party, that we are never to refer to as a
bachelor-slash-bachelorette party, is this weekend,” I remind Carter as I plant
a kiss on his cheek.

“I know.  Drew
already sent me three texts since lunch trying to get me to admit that I was
joking when I told him there wouldn’t be strippers.  I got a call from his
phone after the last text I sent but he never spoke.  I think he was just
silently weeping in the background.”

Carter opens the
door and then turns back to me before walking out.

“Oh and don’t
you
forget that my parents are coming in this weekend from Columbus.  I can’t wait
for you to finally meet them!”

I close the door
behind him and lean my back against it.

“Yay.  Meeting
the in-laws,” I cheer to myself in a completely non-cheery way.

Friday night is
finally here and the work week is over.  Not that I really have anything to
complain about in that regard.  I own my own business (someone pinch me!), and
every moment I spend in the shop makes me happy.  But even when you love what
you do, it’s still nice to forget about it for a few hours.

The minor
freak-outs about Carter are pushed to the back of my mind since everything has
been so perfect between us the last couple of days.  He doesn’t jump when I
walk into the room anymore, and he isn’t whispering on the phone when I get out
of the shower.  A normal woman would probably suspect cheating, but not me.  I
had already followed him a few times and checked his text messages.

Seriously.  Don’t
judge me.

Gavin is
spending the night at my dad’s house, so as soon as I get home from work, I
pack his overnight bag and then got ready for the party.  I still haven’t
stopped thanking Liz after she informed me that she didn’t want a traditional
bachelorette party where a group of girls get in a limo and go to a strip club.

Thank God.

Don’t get me
wrong, I’m all for getting liquored up and heading to a female strip club, but
a male one?  That’s just gross.  Have you been to an all male strip club before? 
These oily, long-haired, jacked up on steroid men come prancing out in banana
hammocks, thrust their hips in your face, and dry hump your leg.  It’s
disgusting.  Have you ever had a sweaty man you don’t know rub his penis on
your knee?  It makes me throw up in my mouth a little just thinking about it. 
And let’s be honest here, the penis – not the prettiest thing in the world to
look at.  If it’s some guy who calls himself the Italian Stallion, wearing a
Speedo with the Italian flag on it, dancing to the theme song from
'The
Jersey Shore',
while he has one foot up on your knee and hip thrusts his
dangling... Okay, I’m just going to stop myself right there before Carter finds
me curled up in the fetal position in the corner mumbling about Italian penis,
and he thinks I’m saying “penne” and doesn’t understand why pasta is making me
cry.

As I was saying,
Liz doesn’t want any of that.  She wants to rent a nice limo bus and go to a
few local wineries.  I’m pretty sure the evening will still include inappropriate
behavior, but at least it won’t also include ruining a man’s self esteem by
pointing and laughing at his junk.  Unless of course Drew decides to get naked
for some reason.  I can’t be responsible for my actions at that point and it
won’t be my fault of he cries.

Once Carter and
I are dressed and ready to go, we placed Gavin in the car and head over to my
dad’s to drop him off.

When we stop at
a red light, Carter takes one hand off of the wheel and places it on the inside
of my bare thigh.

“You wore that short
skirt just to torture me, didn’t you?” Carter asks softly so Gavin won’t hear
him from the backseat. 

“I have no idea
what you’re talking about,” I say with a smirk as I cross my legs.  The
movement forced his warm hand higher up my thigh and his fingers graze just
under the hem of the tattered jean skirt material.

I'm not lying
when I say I kind of enjoy the fact that Carter and I work opposite shifts.  I like
the peace and quiet during the week and spending alone time with Gavin.  It
makes the adjustment from being a single mother to living with the father of my
child not so bad.  I had spent so many years on my own and having my son all to
myself, it was nice we weren’t thrust right into something that was a complete
one-eighty from what we were used to.  Even so, it doesn’t stop me from missing
Carter during the week.

Or more
specifically, missing having sex with Carter during the week.

When you have
sex once, get pregnant, and then go years before you ever have it again and
when you
do
have it again, it’s mind-blowing and delicious and better
than finding a pot of gold, a unicorn, and a leprechaun who shits diamonds at
the end of a rainbow, having to wait a whole week in between having this
wonderful sex is torture.  Just having Carter’s hand on my leg puts all sorts
of dirty thoughts in my head - thoughts that have no business being there when
our son was in the backseat.

“I think you and
I are going to need to make an
important phone call
tonight,” Carter
says with a wag of his eyebrows.

I laugh,
remembering the first time we had sex again after the night he took my
virginity at the frat party.

When Gavin had
knocked on the bedroom door right at the tail end of our
reunion
(emphasis on union) and then asked us what we were up to, in a panic I told him
we were making phone calls.  It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

I place my hand
on top of Carter’s and slide it just a little bit further under the edge of my
skirt.

“You missed a
lot of
phone calls
this week while you were at work.  I had to take care
of them on my own.  My
phone
has a dead battery now,” I tease him.

“Did you record
these
phone calls
?  That’s something I’d like to listen to,” he says
with a wink before turning his focus back to the road as the light turns green.

“Sorry, the
answering
machine
doesn’t have a battery either,” I joke.

“Probably
because you took the batteries out of every single major appliance in a
five-mile-radius and put them in your
phone
,” Carter replies with a
sneer.

“Don’t be
jealous because the
phone
gets more time with me during the week than
you do,” I console him with a pat on his hand.

“I’m not
jealous.  I just used my
Palm PDA
.”

I roll my eyes
at him.

“Your
Palm
PDA
is no match for my…
Vtech Cordless
,” I stammer.

What are we
even talking about anymore?  Is there a point when innuendos jump the shark?

“I know what you
guys are doin’ when you make a phone call,” Gavin pipes up nonchalantly from
the backseat.

You know how
when you’ve told a lie and someone catches you in it your face gets all hot and
you get butterflies in your stomach?  It’s ten times worse when it’s your own
freaking toddler calling you out and looking at you like, “Are you kidding me
with this shit?”

“Heh, heh! What
do you mean, buddy?” Carter asks, laughing nervously.

He looks at me
and I look at him, and we both look in the backseat at Gavin.  Thank God we are
stopped at another red light.  I don’t think Carter can be trusted to keep the
car in our lane at this moment.  Frankly, I don’t think
I
can be trusted
not to open up the door and jump out.  TUCK AND ROLL!

I’m going to
have to tell my son about the birds and the bees in the car on the way to my
father’s house.  I don’t even
get
the term, “the birds and the bees”. 
How does that properly teach a kid about sex?  You never see a pigeon railing a
dove or a honey bee sticking it to a bumble bee.  They really need to call it,
“the cows and the horses”.  Just the other day we drove by a farm and one cow
was mounted up on another cow and Gavin said, “Awww look, Mommy.  That cow is
giving the other cow a hug!”  I could have explained it easily then.  I could
have used correct terminology like penis and sperm and fertilization.  It was a
farm for fuck’s sake.  That sort of stuff can be seen every two feet between
goats and pigs and roosters and chickens.  I could have given him plenty of
examples.  But then I would have to answer the age old question about which
came first, the chicken or the egg and that question still boggles MY mind. 
Now I’m going to have to make up some type of analogy that has to do with
phones.  “First, you pull the antenna out so it’s nice and long, then you push
the right buttons so the other phone is in the mood to make a call…”