I sit in a booth by the window at Applebee’s waiting for Janine to meet me for lunch. Waiting on her isn’t new. She is notoriously late. But it doesn’t bother me. Sophie and Jacob are both in Mother’s Day Out and the older kids are in school. I could probably sit here for hours, just enjoying the peace and quiet.
“Sorry, sorry,” Janine says as she rushes to the booth, plopping herself down and throwing her new Michael Kors purse on the seat next to her.
I never could understand how she could drop hundreds of dollars on a purse. I mean, the thing gets thrown on the ground in public places on a regular basis. I’d rather use a cheap purse until it gets gross then toss it and get a new one.
“I got stuck working on the phone with that subcontractor, Dan. Remember him?” she asks as she picks up a menu to peruse even though I already know what she’s going to order. “His company does frame work. He’s a total bore.”
“Isn’t he your contact at Gilbert Construction or something? Don’t you do a lot of work with them?”
“Engel Elite Homebuilders, actually,” she says, slapping the menu closed and dropping it on the table. Like she even needed to look at the menu to know what she wants. “He’s nice enough. But my God, he’s always using one-liners to try and make me laugh. It’s painful. And he wants to chit-chat every single time I talk to him. Who has time for that?” She waves her hand like she’s dismissing him and picks up her glass to take a drink of her iced tea. “Thanks for getting my drink, by the way.”
“No problem. You know, maybe Dan likes you. Ever thought of that?”
“Please, we haven’t even met in person.” She looks at me and crinkles her nose in disgust. “Besides, the guy owns the company—he has to be my grandpa’s age. That’s just gross.”
“Maybe what you need is an older man. I’m just saying, maybe you should give him a chance. Get to know him a little better. Someone who’s confident enough in himself to let you do your thing and likes to pamper you.”
She pauses for a moment, deep in thought. “Maybe. And an older guy would know his way around the bedroom…”
I smirk. Leave it to Janine to always bring it back to sex.
She really needs to get laid.
“Have you ladies decided what you’d like to eat, or do you need a few minutes?” our server asks as he approaches the table, pen poised above his order pad. Almost immediately I see Janine’s eyes light up as she turns on the charm.
Our server is probably a college kid, maybe in his early twenties. Even I can’t help noticing how attractive the kid is. He’s tall and broody with mussed up hair; it looks like he keeps running his fingers through it. Or like he just rolled out of bed.
He levels us with light gray eyes that almost have me blushing like a schoolgirl.
“I’ll take a cup of your tomato basil soup with your shrimp scampi, please,” she says in a husky voice, never taking her eyes off him and being blatantly obvious that she’s flirting.
“Sounds like a good choice,” he replies, smiling at her before turning to me. “And for you?”
“I’ll take a grilled chicken salad with light ranch on the side.”
Janine whips her head to look at me. “Wait… no stuffed avocado for you? Are you sick? Oh shit, you’re not pregnant again, are you?”
“Shut your face! No, I’m not pregnant!” I say, and this time the blush does creep up my neck. “Just the salad, please,” I say, giving the server our attention again.
“Very good. I’ll have your lunch right out to you.” I watch as Janine follows his ass with her eyes until he’s out of sight.
“You realize you are old enough to be his mother, right?”
Her jaw drops open and she gives me a dirty look. “I beg your pardon! I was nowhere near being a teenage mom!”
I quirk my eyebrow up at her in disagreement.
“Okay, fine,” she says with a dismissive wave. “I’m lucky that Wayne Wright’s swimmers weren’t as fast as I thought for that month. But you have to admit, if I had gotten pregnant, our baby would have looked just like our server. Oh my god!” she yells. “I wonder if our server is Wayne Wright’s kid!”
I whip my head around to see if I can catch a glimpse of him. “Good question. But you realize, if he is Wayne’s kid, you really can’t hit on him now. That’s practically incest.”
She sighs and rests her head on her fist, elbow on the table holding her up. “Such is my life. The hot ones are always just out of reach. So explain why you’re eating rabbit food instead of your favorite cuisine today?”
I shrug, trying to be vague with my answer. “It’s just time to start watching my weight again.”
“I call bullshit,” she says, pointing a finger in my face. She knows me too well sometimes. “Does this have anything to with our trip to the porno palace last week?”
“No,” I lie, scrunching my nose and refusing to look directly at her.
“Uh huh.” She sits back in the booth, crossing her arms and making herself comfortable for what she obviously thinks is going to be a long conversation. “Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened.”
“But something was supposed to happen. And it didn’t?”
“No,” I say quietly, trying not to let on how embarrassed I really am by the whole situation.
“What? That French Maid outfit was perfect! It was hot and sexy and covered all your physical deficiencies as required! What could have gone wrong?”
I shrug. “I guess he just wasn’t interested in having sex with me that night.”
“I call bullshit again,” she says, pointing her finger in my face again. “Every man wants to have sex every night. You’re leaving something out.”
I roll my eyes and give in. “Fine. So I told him I had a surprise for him and to wait for me on the bed. I took my time and used all those weird sex lotions you made me get the other day.”
“Oooh! Did you try the Hoochie Lotion? Did it make your skin tingle and glow like it says on the bottle?”
“Eh,” I say with a shrug. “It made me tingle, but I’m not sure if it was that or because I had just shaved my legs for the first time in however long.”
Janine grimaces. “Ew. Why would you wait so long to shave?”
“You realize I can’t even pee without someone’s fingers sliding under the doorway looking for me, right? How do you expect me to have time to shave? Somebody is bound to fling the shower curtain open if I’m in there longer than five minutes.”
“You know you’re not making a case for me to ever have children,” she deadpans.
“Stick with cats. They’re easier.”
“Noted. So back to the issue at hand. What happened when you went to tickle Jeremiah’s love muscle with your feather duster?”
I snort. “It didn’t get that far. When I got out of the bathroom, he was asleep. Snuggled up in his blankets, spooning my pregnancy pillow, snoring up a storm.”
She sits up straight, green eyes wide. “Hold. The. Phone. What the hell is that giant marriage-killing pillow still doing in your bed?”
I purse my lips and look away. I knew I was going to say too much. “It’s comfortable.”
“It’s a sexy-time killer! It might as well be a small child living in your room for all its aphrodisiac-squelching properties!”
“It’s only been six months since Sophie was born!”
“Which means the pillow has been in your marriage bed for six months too long!”
I huff. “Fine! I’ll get rid of the damn pillow!”
She smiles in triumph. “Good. Now that that’s cleared up, you tried to seduce him again the next night, right?”
I look away trying to avoid her glare.
“You didn’t, did you?” she screeches.
“No, I didn’t!” I whisper-yell back. “I mean, he rolled over and went to sleep knowing I had a sexy surprise for him! That’s a pretty good indicator that he’s not interested in having sex with me!”
Janine groans and drops her head to the table in defeat. “How is it you’ve been married for so long and have like a hundred children and yet you are still so clueless when it comes to sex?”
I purse my lips at her insult.
“Look,” she says, popping her head back up. “You know men are clueless. You have to catch him in the spur of the moment. Sex it up. Let him know he’s about to get his rocks off so there’s no question as to why he’s waiting on the bed after a long day of work.”
I sigh again. “Trying to spice up this marriage is a lot of work,” I whine. “I’m starting to think I don’t even care enough about sex to put this much effort in.”
Janine gasps. “You bite your tongue! You are going to be living proof to all exhausted moms out there that you can have lots of babies and still get it on regularly.”
“No pressure or anything.”
“I have another idea.”
“No!” I practically yell. Just the thought of another one of Janine’s “ideas” makes me want to blush. No telling what she’ll drag me into now.
“Yes!” she says with a smile. “You’ve decided that you need to lose a few pounds, right?”
“Duh. It would be nice if my boobs would fall back into place, too,” I say, taking a peek down my shirt. Yep. Definitely not where they were a few years ago.
“First of all, I think you’re crazy… hey, perv,” she says, snapping at me. “Eyes off your boobs and on me.” I huff and lift my head up from my observation to look at her. “We should join a gym.”
“Now why would I do that?” I scoff.
“Two reasons. Number one,” she says, ticking off her fingers, “hot men in spandex. And number two… free childcare.”
My eyebrows quirk up at that statement.
“Free childcare?”
She nods with a smirk, knowing she’s got me right where she wants me. “Up to three hours a day.”
“Sold!” I say without hesitation. I guess I’m joining a gym to get my sexy on.