More than I Deserve

After only a few moments of talking to her, I had to admit that I liked her. It wasn't her fault that she'd been born looking like that.

When she returned to her Escalade she brought the two most adorable little girls imaginable with her. When I saw those little girls, I almost cried because they were so sweet.

It was hard to imagine that the woman standing before me had born not one but two children. She was still as thin as a reed, with long legs, a heart shaped butt and very generous boobs for her frame.

I was floored when she told me that she didn't have two kids, she had three, but the youngest, a two year old was not only too small to run around at a party for five year olds, but had refused to leave her daddy.

That part ripped my guts out, for some reason. I just stared at her wondering how she got her body to snap back like that after having her kids. She was a few years younger than me, but looked much younger.

"Yeah, ah know," she smiled. "Ah'm a regular baby machine. But he keeps pumpin' em into me and I keep carryin' em. I think we're gonna try at least one more time for a boy."

"My God," I said. "That must be awful." She started laughing and the sound of her laughter and her scratchy voice went all over the restaurant just as the kids for her party started to arrive.

"It's heaven," she said. "I love my husband more than I love breathing. And I always wanted a house full of kids. I grew up in a tiny house with five brothers. Our house only had one bathroom and two bedrooms. Even after mah parents died there just nevah seemed to be much room."

She smiled. "Now mah house is probably three times that size but there still ain't room ta swing a dead cat. The difference is that there's a whole lot more love there. There's so much love in that house that it fills it up to the walls.

"Every time we try ta sit down, there's a little girl huggin' us and sitting between us," she smiled. "Especially Bobbie. That little girl is two years old and already has her daddy wrapped around her little finger."

Over the next few moments it became apparent that her daughter was very popular already. There had to be at least fifty kids there already. At first I'd thought that the huge cake would be so big that she'd take some home with her. Suddenly I began to wonder if there would be enough.

There were kids everywhere. The play area was full. And I had very little time to do anything. I checked the restaurant looking for someone who wasn't busy that I could get to put the drinks on the tables. I really wanted someone to watch the play area too. The kids were small but they still needed to be watched.

That was when she surprised me. She looked around in the way that only a mother can. She pulled out an iPhone and made a call. "Holly, I need you in here," she said. "And bring the other cake."

The shiny black paint on her Escalade sparkled as the door opened and a chunky teenage girl got out carrying a second but smaller sheet cake and came into the restaurant.

"Holly, can ya watch the kids in the play thingy," she said. I had wondered how a woman who seemed to be such a good mother could have left her kids in the car when she first brought the cake in. Now I saw that she hadn't. She apparently had her baby sitter with her. Holly took over the play area organizing the kids into teams for games and the party went into full swing.

She then picked up a tray full of cups and went from table to table placing them. To say I was floored was an understatement. Parents always figured that all they needed to do was pay for a party and their responsibilities ended.

Her help made what would have been a daunting task almost fun. She kept asking me what she could do to help. But if there was one thing she did that afternoon that made an impression on me it was when she went out into the restaurant and came back with my son Joey.

Joey had been taught from birth not to even talk to strangers. But somehow, showing that her charm wasn't only effective on fully grown men, she got him to not only talk to her but to leave his booth with her.

"Mona," she said, reading my name tag. "Is it okay if this young man comes to the party?"

That whole afternoon had been a strange one for me. By then I was having trouble believing that I hadn't wanted to work the party.

My son was usually kind of shy and reserved. But there was so much going on that he'd noticed and wanted to be a part of it. I was still kind of leery. Joey didn't have many friends and he wasn't a very sociable child.

She took care of that. She crooked her finger and the birthday girl came right over.

"Angie, this is Joey," she said. "Introduce him to your friends."

The little girl showed then that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. "Hi, my name is Angela," she said. "It's my birthday. Thank you for coming to my party."

The little girl seemed to really appreciate Joey wanting to be there. Like her mother, she seemed really genuine and my insulated son even felt it.

"Sorry, I didn't bring you a present," he said. That little girl surprised me even more then. She laughed. The little bitch was laughing at my son.

"I have plenty of STUFF," she said. "I don't need more presents. But you can never have enough friends. And new friends are the best of all. Come on we're playing games. Do you like games?" He nodded like his head would fall off. "Later you can cut your own piece of cake," the little charmer told him. "You can cut the biggest piece in the whole wide world."

I felt so bad about my anger and misjudging the little girl that I almost cried.

By the end of the party, Joey had a lot of new friends and my opinion on spoiled little kids had been rewritten. I also had a new friend.

The party itself had been very successful. As I watched a lot of exhausted kids including my own son walked away, so exhausted from all of the fun they'd had that they could barely hang onto to the bags of goodies that they'd been given.

I was very surprised when my new friend Sam, introduced me to several parents who wanted parties for their own kids in the upcoming months of the summer.

I was even more surprised when Angela, yawning herself walked over and asked if Joey could go to the zoo the following day with her and her sister.

The party had been a pleasant event for the kids, but I hadn't expected for anything beyond the party to happen.

But Angela was adamant. She genuinely wanted my son to accompany them. "He's smart and he knows a lot of stuff about animals," she said. "He read a lot of books like Daddy does. Please can he come?"

I needed to get away from those people. They were too damned nice.

I had been so worried about my son, ever fitting in and now that he'd found people he did fit in with, I would be the one to disappoint him because there was no way I had enough money to take him to the zoo with them.

"Honey, I would love to bring him," I said. "But I'm kind of in charge of this restaurant and I have to work tomorrow."

"But Joey knows stuff about animals," she said. "My mommy just reads the signs that say what the animal is. And most of the time she just talks to my daddy on her phone. Even though she's gonna see him as soon as he gets home from his meeting. Then they're gonna kiss and stuff like they haven't seen each other in years."

Sam was turning redder by the second. "Mona, why don't you bring him to work with you again," she said. "The girls and I will come by here at ten o clock and pick him up. It will be our treat in exchange for his knowledge about animals." I reluctantly agreed, unable to disappoint the pleading faces and out stuck lips of Angela, her younger sister Kimmie, my own son, Joey and Sam herself.

"Okay," I heard myself say and felt so much better when the frowns on front of me turned to smiles.

I took Joey home and for once had no problems getting him into bed. One day had made a huge difference in my son. He had packed his book bag full of animal books that he couldn't really read, being only six, but I had read them to him so many times that he knew most of what was in them by heart. All he had to do was see a picture and he could pretty much spout what was on the page verbatim.

Sam was sitting up on the couch watching our ancient television set when we got home. He coughed a few times and I ignored him. "Sorry, I couldn't watch the kid today," he said. "I slept all day, but I feel better."

I barely paid him any attention. I was too busy wondering about my new friend. Sam was an unusual name for a woman. Especially when it wasn't a nick name or short for something else.

That night for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like I needed a drink after work. I even turned my Sam down when he offered to fetch me one.

My Sam. That was a fucking joke. He had never been mine. Even after all of these years together, we had never gotten married. He wasn't the marriage type and I felt as if I was still married to Bobby. Sam was sucking the life out of me though and someday I was going to have to do something about it.

I mean, even if a miracle did happen and Bobby came back for me, having Sam around wouldn't be a good thing. And it would be just as bad if I met someone else.

Sam and I still had our arguments. I think that he thought that he deserved to have me supporting him because in his mind, the two of us having sex had cost him the chance to marry his fiancé, the doctor.

He also enjoyed pointing out the fact that as much as I had idolized my husband, Bobby had proven to even more unreliable than Sam was. At least Sam had stuck around. Bobby, he pointed out to me had simply bolted when he got tired of me.

"Sure, I go out and fuck other women," he said. "But I always come home to you, Mona."

I had to give him at least partial credit for that. And he was right. Bobby HAD in fact run out on me. Whether it was for another woman as he claimed, which had proven not to be true ... Or if it was because he simply wanted to be single so he could travel the world solving all kinds of problems for the oil company, Bobby had deserted me. He had abandoned me and betrayed me in the worst way possible.

I know that most women would consider cheating on them to be the worst way possible, but they're wrong. If Bobby had gone after another woman that would be something I could compete against. Bobby loved me too much for any woman to be able to offer him something I couldn't match.

But it's too God Damned hard to compete against a job and a lifestyle. I really should have seen it coming. Even when we were young, Bobby just loved fixing things. There were days when we spent the entire day at some old lady's house so Bobby could fix her fence or her lawnmower.

And when he got the chance to travel to all of those places with the oil company, I should have seen the stars in his eyes. It was the old days all over again. But instead of going all over our neighborhood fixing things, the oil company was sending him all over the God Damned planet. I couldn't compete with that. No woman could. It was too fucking big.

But just like when we were younger, after everything was fixed or Bobby got tired, he always reached for me when he was ready to settle down and relax. And that was what I was hoping would happen in our lives. Sooner or later Bobby would have seen enough and fixed enough. Sooner or later he would be ready for a home and a family. And when he was we'd have our talk.

When Bobby's friend told me that Bobby had lied to me about having another woman, I had breathed a sigh of relief. Knowing Bobby the way I did told me exactly why he had lied. He was trying to piss me off. Of course that made what I had done even worse. I almost wished that he had found another woman. If we had both done it, we'd have been even and getting back together would have been easier. But I knew deep down in my heart that I would see Bobby again.

To be truthful, Sunday started out boring. It was the same old thing. We sold breakfast until eleven and then switched over. Of course we still sold breakfast items the rest of the day too, but since we needed all of the grill space for the burgers and fries, anyone who ordered breakfast items had to wait for them.

Most of the time, my mind was on Joey. Unbelievably, this was his first time being away from me except for hen he stayed home while I was at work. Even when I took him to visit his grandparents, I was there.

One of the things that I had forgotten to find out, in my haste, was what time they would be back from the zoo. When I got done working at noon, I still hadn't heard from them. I called Sam.

"Sam are you guys okay," I asked. "Hey I didn't hear a dial tone. Were you already on your phone?"

"Uhm ... Maybe?" she said. I laughed remembering what her daughter had said about her the day before.

"How are the kids?" I asked.

"I'm sitting at a table while they're watching the seals. Your son is so cute," she gushed. "Every exhibit we go to, Joey whips out a book and then starts spouting animal facts. Half of the parents we run into are listening to him," she said.

"Uhm ... I'm done working for the day. So uhm ..." I began.

"Jeezus, Mona, relax," she said. "Let him enjoy himself. I promise to take care of him as if he was one a mah own. That gives you three choices. Number one I'll bring him to the restaurant right now if you want. But you'll have three disappointed little kids on your hands. Number two you can come out here and join us. Or number three... you can go home and have some relaxation time to yourself for a while and I'll bring him home when we're ready to leave."

"Number three please," I said. Somehow hearing that scratchy voice with her slightly country accent had calmed down my fears. That and the fact that I could hear Joey in the background talking excitedly about seals and sea lions. There was a joy in my son's voice that I couldn't take away from him.

I went home and did something I rarely found the time to do. I took a long relaxing bath and read my own book while I languished in the tub.

"What were you doing in there?" asked Sam. He hadn't shaved yet and was holding a can of beer. As I looked at him, I wondered what I had ever seen in him. Then I remembered that having him was slightly better than being alone, but only by the tiniest of margins.

As if he could read my thoughts, he quickly spoke up. "Where's the kid?" he asked. He never called him by name. It was always "YOUR kid," or when he was worried that I might throw him out, "THE kid."

"He went to the zoo with our new friends," I said.

"Do we really have enough money for that?" he asked. I knew that more than anything else he was worried about his allowance.

"Your money for beer and whores is secure," I said. "Sam is paying for it."

"Who the fuck is Sam?" he asked. "Do I know this guy?" I started laughing. When I considered how pathetic I was, I laughed even more.

"What's so damned funny?" he asked angrily. "Are you replacing me? Because nobody else will put up with your shit for very long you know? No other guy is going to put up with you moping year after fucking year over a guy who left you high and dry for no reason. And your kid is weird. No man is going to want to be around a kid like that. I can get someone else you know. Just like your fucking Bobby did. I can find me another woman. And at least you could have found a guy with a different name. It just makes you even more desperate. You picked a guy with my same name." He paused for a second and then smiled. "If there is a Sam," he smirked.

I laughed even harder. "Of course there's a Sam," I laughed. "It almost sounds like you're jealous. Sam is a woman. She has three kids and she has enough money to easily pay for a trip to the zoo."

"Oh shit," he spat. "I don't want to meet her. She's had three rug rats? Her pussy has to be stretched out so far you could shoot a basketball in there and not touch the sides."

I laughed then. "Don't encourage too many of these trips, Mona," he said. "Sooner or later she's going expect for you to start paying for them too."

"Sam, when you start making the money, you can start telling me how to spend it," I said. His hurt look brought joy to my heart.

I went out onto my balcony with a single glass of wine and that book. I sat back in a comfortable chair and enjoyed the sunlight and a small breeze as I relaxed and read my book. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been able to relax and just be.

Before I knew it three hours had passed and my phone suddenly rang.

"I think we're in trouble," said Sam over the phone.

"Is Joey alright?" I asked tersely. My voice was far more shrill than I had intended.

"Of course he's alright," cracked Sam. "I told you I would treat him like one of mah own. We're on our way up. I'll see ya in a few minutes."

"Don't you need my address?" I asked.

"Mona, Joey is six and smart as a whip," she said. "He knows his address. I just punched it into mah GPS and ... Well ... You'll see. Open up the door for us we're down in the lobby."

I went over to the door and hit the buzzer to let them come up. A few minutes later I could hear the pitter-patter of six tiny little feet running down our hallway excitedly yelling at each other.

I opened the door to find three heavily breathing little kids, all holding some sort of zoo souvenir. Joey was holding a stuffed monkey, which surprised me because it wasn't something I would have expected him to want.

I looked around and didn't see Sam anywhere. A few moments after the three kids had come into the apartment and sprawled on my aging carpeting, I heard her coming down the hall.

I saw the hair first. She was walking down the hall in tiny white tennis shoes and jeans that seemed to be molded to her sculptured legs. She wore a dark blue T-shirt with a car of some sort on it. I didn't recognize the car itself, but the Mustang emblem on it was familiar. Bobby had always wanted a Mustang.

Then I saw the large flat box in her hands. She looked at me skeptically and came inside. Again she surprised me. Her eyes got huge and she crossed the living room to my balcony. She looked at me with huge eyes and asked, "Can Ah go out there?"

"Of course you can," I smiled. She went out and stepped onto the balcony. She sat down in the chair next to mine and actually took a sip of my wine. She gestured for me to join her and opened the pizza box.

As soon as the lid opened, three little voices screamed, "Pizza," and headed for the box.

As well mannered as they were I had expected that maybe Sam's girls would be a little bit snooty. I was wrong again. They asked for a slice and when Sam told them it was okay they took them right out of the box and ate them. Joey did as they did, although to my knowledge he'd never had pizza before.

"I thought you'd be a bit upset about me bringing the competition's food," she smirked as I bit into my own slice.

"Shut up, Sam," I laughed.

"This is awesome," she said. "We're so high up."

"Sam, this is only the fourth floor," I laughed.

"I'm skeered a heights," she whispered. We were having a great time just talking. It was something else that I hadn't done in years. The kids were stretched out on the rug looking at one of Joey's books.

"Why'd he want the monkey?" I asked.

"The monkey isn't his," she laughed. "He won it for you at one of the games. He got a book about the zoo and quickly put it in his book bag with all of the other ones. He won me a lion."

"How come you get the lion?" I laughed.

"Cuz I was there," she smirked. We talked about everything under the sun, including some things that might've offended some people. "Why aren't you snooty?" I asked her.