Wrong Day For a Cross Word

As I’m sure you’ve already noticed, there are four picture entires just before this one chronicling my past week spent in Nashville.  I promised in my last real entry, Hissy Fits and Mind Erasers, that I would elaborate on the uncomfortable ride to the airport with Jeremy.  Here goes…

Jeremy no longer lives with Tammy.  She kicked him out months ago.  The only nights he ever stays at their house are the nights when Tammy is working and he’s keeping Landon.  Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, he stays until Tammy gets home from work, which is about 4am.  He has (had is a better word considering he is unemployed as of last weekend) to leave at that time to be at work by 6am anyway, so he was out the door pretty much as soon as she walked in it.  Tammy has no idea where he’s been staying, and she doesn’t really care.  All she knows is that it isn’t with her.

As soon as Tammy revealed to Jeremy that I would be coming to visit, he became paranoid.  He began slipping little questions into their conversations.  "What are you going to do if Rachel tries to hook up with you?"  "Do you think Rachel will get drunk and hit on you?"  For some reason, Tammy still tries to spare his feelings, so she continually told him that it wasn’t the case.  Although I certainly had my own intentions for this weekend (intentions that Tammy was completely aware of), there was no reason for Jeremy to know that.  She tried to drop the subject, but he pushed with the questions every time they talked.  Even after my arrival, after our first couple of nights out, he asked if I had made any inappropriate advances toward her.  Had I not been awake for two days straight due to my cancelled flight, I might’ve.  However, I must admit that I was unusually well-behaved.

Fast forward to Sunday night.  After the huge celebration on Saturday, Tammy and I decided to veg out Sunday afternoon.  We stopped by an organic supermarket to pick up items for homemade pizzas, and we planned to watch a marathon of wrestling and UFC shows that Nick had recorded for us.  I made it through the previous week’s Monday Night Raw, but afterwards, I immediately conked out on the couch.  I’m pretty sure Tammy did, too, but she got up a couple of hours later to get in the bed.  She tried to wake me to join her, but I never budged.  Jeremy was still at the house when I fell asleep.  He was job hunting on the computer that afternoon, and I assumed that he would leave when he finished. 

I woke up fairly early the next morning and decided to make pancakes and sausage for Tammy and Landon.  They woke up to the smell of breakfast and coffee and joined me in the kitchen… followed by Jeremy.  Tammy was not amused, and neither was I.  It was blatantly obvious that the only reason he stayed was to keep Tammy and me apart.  I think that what irritated Tammy the most, though, was that he slept in the bed with her.  It was like he just invited himself back in.

Later that day, Jeremy did some job hunting online, but that was about it.  It was Monday (a day when he could’ve been downtown handing out resumes), but I don’t think he even left the house.  Tammy was busy cleaning up the kitchen, and since she was getting annoyed with her slow dial-up and I was checking my email anyway, she asked if I would mind setting up and paying some bills for her online.  One of the bills was for the new car they bought.  Jeremy used to drive a Durango (keep in mind that Tammy owns the same POS but paid off Honda Accord that she’s been driving since I met her five years ago), but it was having a lot of mechanical problems.  They traded in the Durango on a new V8 Dodge Charger.  I just about shit my pants when I saw the payment — $530 a month.  I didn’t say a word about it… at the time.

That night, Tam and I headed over to Nick’s to watch Monday Night Raw.  We got home around 11pm, and immediately laid down in the bed.  Jeremy was again working on the computer, and we again assumed he would leave when he finished.  We were wrong.  Tammy and I laid there together, arms and legs tangled up around each other just waiting to hear the front door latch.  We waited and waited and waited.  Eventually we both fell asleep, but I was awakened in the middle of the night to Jeremy… getting in the bed!

I was pissed.  I was not going to let him force me out of that bed when he really wasn’t welcome in it.  I scooted over only an inch to make sure he was hanging partially off the side.  Eventually, though, I got hot sleeping in the middle.  I woke him up and told him that if he was going to sleep in the bed with us, he’d have to deal with the middle.  I was about to have a heat stroke.  He agreed, and as I crawled over top of him to get to the outside edge, I pulled the covers back.  That boy was naked from the waist down!  What?!

Early the next morning, Tammy had to leave for her nanny job.  She woke me up before she left and gave me a hug.  I was heading home that day, so this was the last time I saw her.  I rolled over and went back to sleep for a couple more hours.  When I woke up, Jeremy was still in the bed next to me.  I rolled my eyes, crawled out of bed, and headed to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.  About half an hour later, Jeremy followed.  He sat down at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, and I stepped out on the back porch for a smoke and to give Tammy a ring.  I knew that Jeremy was right on the other side of the wall, so I was prepared to be careful about what I said.

The first words out of Tammy’s mouth were, "What the hell was that about last night?"  She wasn’t even aware that Jeremy had gotten in the bed naked.  She was just pissed that he was in the bed at all.  When I explained to her that he was sans shorts, she became livid.  The longer we talked the more angry we both became.  She confided in me that she still had not paid her mortgage for February, and it was due on the first.  I gave her advice to give to Jeremy on how I found a job when I desperately needed one.  I explained to her that sitting on the computer every day wasn’t going to cut it.  I also gave her my thoughts on the expensive ass car sitting out on the front lawn that he doesn’t even let her drive (even though she’s paying for it).  By the end of the conversation, she had come to the conclusion that she needed to get a third job — a night shift position at a Walmart or something.

As we hung up, I headed back inside.  Jeremy walked out of the bedroom dressed nicely and off to an interview.  Normally, I would be proud of him for that, but since it was, by this time, 1pm and he was just leaving the house, I couldn’t be.  He should’ve been up and ready to go at 8am.  Not to mention, he only went to the one business that day, and he didn

‘t even take a resume.  I asked him to be back by 4pm to take me to the airport, and he left.  I spent the next couple of hours showering, getting dressed, and packing my things.

Jeremy pulled up to the house around 3:30pm.  However, he sat out in the car for half an hour.  By the time he walked in the door, we had to immediately walk right back out and be on our way.  Most of the drive was quiet and a little awkward.  He’s very well aware of the fact that I don’t like him.  About halfway through our trip, he said, "I want to talk to you about a couple of things."  I just laughed and rolled my eyes.  I responded curtly, "What about?"

First he apologized.  He didn’t exactly apologize for getting in the bed… he apologized for getting in the bed naked.  The half hour that he spent in the car in front of the house was on the phone with Tammy.  She laid into him about how uncomfortable it made her for him to be in the bed.  Could he imagine how it made me feel?  He said his I’m sorry’s, and I accepted.  Whatever.  It doesn’t really matter at this point.  He already foiled my master plan of getting laid.

After about five minutes of awkward silence, he said, "There’s something else."  He proceeded to tell me about how when I was on the phone with Tammy that morning, he could hear everything I was saying.  I know that.  He told me that the walls are paper thin and that he felt like there was a big bash Jeremy session going on.  He said that he listened for awhile but that he got so angry, he had to get up and leave.  He told me that he was mad about me bringing up the car payment with her and the fact that he still has a payment on that damn motorcycle.  He said, "Out of respect for me, please don’t talk to her about us anymore."

I lost it.  Now, I’m the kind of person to sugarcoat things.  I usually just want everyone to get along.  I’m always blunt about my own life and my own drama, but never about other people’s.  Well, given my recent situation with Bobby, I’ve been in a completely different frame of mind these days.  Jeremy picked the wrong day to say a cross word to me.  Now, I’m just going to paraphrase the words that next came out of my mouth, but you’ll get the gist of it.  Imagine me saying these things with an increasingly angry, stern tone:

"Hold it right there.  I don’t owe you anything.  Tammy is my best friend.  We’re women.  Who do you think she’s going to talk to when she has problems?  She obviously can’t talk to you because you either don’t listen, or you get angry and she can’t get a word in edgewise.  You’re not going to tell me what I can and cannot talk about with my best friend! 

"Jeremy, I knew you were sitting in the kitchen when I was talking to her this morning.  I knew you could hear every word I was saying.  If you’re going to eavesdrop on a conversation, make sure you hear everything!  If you were actually listening to what I saying, you would know that I was not "bashing" you.  I was giving Tammy advice.  I was giving her advice that I used when I was looking for a job.  You cannot sit at a computer for a few hours a day and call that job hunting.  You need to have your ass up and out of bed at 8am, dressed, and ready to stop by as many businesses as possible before lunch.  You need to have a good resume in hand.  If they tell you they’re not hiring right now, then you tell them to take your resume anyway.  Eventually, they are going to need new employees.  Tell them that when something becomes available, give you a call!  That is exactly how I got my first job at the bank.  That is what I was telling Tammy on the phone. 

"Let’s face it.  You don’t have an education.  You obviously can’t afford to get one now.  I hate to tell you, but you’re probably going to get stuck at a job that you don’t like.  I know that fucking sucks, but that’s just part of life.  You don’t really have much of a choice now do you?  Jeremy, you have a house, a new car, a motorcycle.  For god’s sake, you have a child.  You have to pay for these things, and Tammy can’t do it on her own.  You have to take responsibility for yourself.

"Now about that car.  I understand that you needed a new car.  I understand that you were having a lot of problems with the Durango.  I understand that you were upside down on your payments.  I have been in that very same situation.  You want to know how I fixed it?  It certainly was not by buying a new V8 Dodge Charger!  You don’t need a fucking car like that sitting in your driveway.  You could’ve bought a fucking Focus or a Neon and had a $300 payment.  Instead, you’re paying $530 on a car when you haven’t even paid your mortgage for the month!  Now, does that sound smart to you?

"I’m going to be completely honest with you right now.  (At this point, I had my finger up in his face.)  If I were Tammy, you would’ve been gone a long time ago.  I would have nothing to do with you.  But you know what?  I’m not married to you.  I don’t have a house and a child with you.  I don’t know what it’s like to have those things tying me to a relationship.  The only advice that I’ve ever given Tammy — and you can ask her this — is that I can’t give her advice.  I’m not going to have kids, so I never will never know what it’s like to be in her position.  So, you can get this crazy notion out of your head that I’m trying to break up your marriage.  That’s not the case.  And I will talk to Tammy about whatever I please, and if she wants to talk to me about her problems, that’s exactly what we will talk about.  That’s what friends do for each other."

Jeremy never once tried to interrupt me, and by that point, we had been sitting at the front of the terminal for a good fifteen minutes.  I was afraid security would come by and make us move, so I got my things and got out of the car.  I looked at Jeremy, smiled, and said in my most perky voice, "Have a good day!  Drive safely!"  I turned and proceeded into the airport.  I have been wanting to say a lot of those things to him for a long time, and damn, it felt good!

Cheers,
Felina