My guy looks at other women.
I knew this of course, hell, I look at women, too, but this was the first time he’d actually been specific about it. My guy revealed this bit of information randomly the other night, in the same stream of thought that included a story about purchasing drywall and general complaining about road construction. Apparently, somewhere in his day he saw his “favorite” receptionist at a local business, making the chore he was on less distasteful than normal.
The hairs on the back of my neck bristled and my eyes narrowed in stink-eye preparation. It was an involuntary reaction to news that I knew in my core was completely innocent – yet the fact that a woman was out there, capable of turning his head in more than passing, started some sort of primal warning siren in my otherwise unconcerned brain.
A hundred thoughts crashed around at once: Who is she? She can’t be prettier than I am. Where does she work? Is my FOID card current? How does my hair look right now?
I couldn’t hold back. “What does she look like?” I asked.
My guy was four topics past the receptionist story by the time I spit the question out (not that I was paying attention) so I can’t say that I blame him for looking confused.
“Your little receptionist friend,” I clarified. “The one you think is… cute.” My lips curled around the word in slow motion. The way I said it, “cute” sounded more like “evil whore.”
My ill-contained jealousy seemed to amuse my guy. He’s never been one to pass up an opportunity to press my buttons, so as I sat across the table, slightly frothing at the mouth, he described at length every woman’s basic nightmare.
I got more annoyed with each adjective he pelted at me. Blond… big boobed…. perky… foreign accent… All things I am most definitely lacking. Never mind my perfect ass and fabulous red hair; I could just picture him leaning over a counter to chat with The Girl Who Is Not Me, charming her with his smile and “accidentally” dropping a guitar pick on the floor to leave no doubt of his coolness.
“During the winter, she wore this Russian fur hat that was kinda hot,” he admitted. The slightly flushed look on his face showed he was absolutely tickled to death by the picture of little blondie in her cute fur hat. Any sense calm I may have been clutching was pulling father and farther away from me – no one likes to know there’s another chick out there, a locally accessible one at that, sneaking into your guy’s private peep show – and I was about to claw that image right out of his head until I remembered something.
“Was it a gray furry hat, like the one George wore on that episode Seinfeld?” I asked.
“Yeah, it was just like that.”
Ha! That was all I needed to know. “So… your little friend wears a Rat Hat!” I declared. “You like a girl in a Rat Hat!”
He started to stammer. “It wasn’t a rat hat. It was just a furry hat.”
“You know,” I said. “I saw some women in an advertisement for Russian brides who were wearing Rat Hats. I’ll bet you’d like them. I’ll cut it out for you!”
His face reddened as it became clear the control of the situation had shifted in my favor.
“Awww, it’s okay,” I cooed. “Mail order brides need love too.”
Relief washed over me as I saw his image of The Girl Who Is Not Me turn from a naughty pin-up to a crumpled poke mag advertisement. I don’t know what brought on that bout of deranged jealousy, but I ultimately would have been able to suck it up had he not decided to stoke my mental fires. But since turnabout is, as he constantly reminds me, fair play, I felt much better having gained my mental one-up.
“Oh look,” I said, glancing down at the Scrabble game we had been playing. “If ‘rathat’ were one word, I could get triple word score!”
The next thing I knew, my guy was lunging at me and pinning me to the floor. “You are just too much of a smartass for your own good,” he said, laughing and clamping a hand over my mouth.
As we wrestled around the floor, I couldn’t help by think: Smartass, 1. Rat Hat, 0. Me and my guy, equal.
