Page 113 of The Fed Sex Man

Jo

Whistlinga song that I recognized but couldn’t name, Jenny walked into the store in a particularly cheery mood.

“Did you have a good weekend?” I asked.

She smiled. “I did.”

I gestured toward her cut-offs. They were short enough that much more of her extremities were out than in. “I like the shorts, are they new?”

“They are.”

She was wearing a white tee shirt with the album cover of Jamey Johnson’s first album on it. I hadn’t seen her wear it before.

“And the shirt?” I asked.

She pulled the hem away from her waist, straightening the fabric of the shirt for me to see. “New shirt, and....” She hiked her leg high in the air and pulled the crotch of her shorts to the side, revealing a pink patch of lace. “New panties, too.”

“I’m guessing you went shopping?”

“That, and a bunch of other things.”

“What’s the song you were whistling?” I asked.

“The Andy Griffith Show.”

“How’d you get that stuck in your head?”

“Shawn and I binge-watched about fifty episodes of it. Life was simple back then. You know it?”

Despite my desire to watch other things, I’d seen enough episodes of the show as a child to know what she was talking about.

“It’s not simple now, that’s for sure.”

“Have you watched it?” she asked.

“I’ve seen it,” I said. “With my dad when I was little. I never really paid attention to it, though.”

“It’s pretty cool. Each show has a lesson. In one of them, the little boy got a slingshot. He told Barney that he was going to use it to shoot tin cans. He ended up shooting it up in a tree and killing a bird. His dad made him take care of the three baby birds that were orphaned when he killed their mother. So, he took care of them until they could fly on their own. Then, he set them free. There’s a crap-load of lessons to be learned from that one episode alone.”

I really didn’t care to discuss the Andy Griffith Show. I turned toward a box of books I was unpacking. “Sounds like you guys had fun.”

“I like hanging out with him.” She reached for one of the books. “So, what did you do this weekend?”

If she spent all weekend with Shawn watching TV, I found it odd that he hadn’t told her what happened. I wondered if she knew but was acting as if she didn’t.

“Broke up with Tyson,” I said.

Her eyes shot wide. “What?”

“I broke up with him Saturday night.”

“Ho-Lee-Shit,” she gasped. “What happened?”

I wanted to explain the event as it unfolded and see what she thought of my reaction. Convinced I’d overreacted, but not sure to what degree I’d done so, I wanted her unbiased opinion.

“I found an old yearbook of his,” I explained. “While I was flipping through it I found out there was a teacher that he was sweet on. A teacher that looked exactly like me.”

“The librarian?” she asked.