For a moment, they reconnected through a warm embrace.
"Oh, believe me! I couldn't wait to get out of that stupid cocktail party."
"Was he there?" Terri asked.
Louise rolled her eyes. "Oh my God! What an arrogant douche!"
"What happened?"
"Well, first I had to hear from one of our project managers - NOT from my boss, who should have given me a heads up - that starting next week, I'm going to have to work with the jerk."
"What? You're going to be working with Antonio?"
"Yup!"
"Oh my goodness! Really?"
"Really! My idiot boss apparently agreed to this without telling me."
"I thought you told her that you didn't want to..."
"I did," Louise interrupted. "But I guess she was too worried about her toddler's latest case of the sniffles to back me up."
"What a stupid cow!"
"Oh, please! Don't hold back!" Louise pleaded. "I want to hear you say it."
Terri laughed.
"No, seriously!" Louise insisted.
"Okay ... Dumb bitch?"
"More!"
"I am not going there!" Terri protested.
"Oh, come on!" Louise smiled genuinely as they shared a good laugh.
"So, anyway," Terri continued, "what else happened?"
"Oh, yeah, well, I was kind of giving him a hard time about the fact that he never called me after he left."
"What did he say?"
"Something about his family, blah, blah, blah!"
"Oh!" Terri exclaimed. "That's it!"
"What's it?"
"I figured it out!" Terri said. "I just can't believe that I missed the signs."
"Figured what out?" Louise asked impatiently. "Missed what signs?"
Terri looked her friend in the eye and spoke with exaggerated drama. "He's a MAMA'S boy!"
Louise let out a howl of laughter. "Oh, you're joking!"
"No, now I'm sure of it!" Terri asserted. "It makes total sense!"
Louise tried to guess Terri's reasoning. "So when he went back home..."
"He was coming back home to Mama," Terri explained. "And she put him under her thumb. 'Where did you go? Who were you with? What did you do?' He was no longer free to do as he pleased, so he had to stop contacting you."
Louise was incredulous. "I don't know. He's a grown man."
"So, why didn't he act like a man and call you? Or keep calling you?"
"You have a point."
"While he was up here, he was running off of the leash," Terri continued. "Nobody kept track of his friends and his whereabouts. You two guys spent time together and ended up fooling around."
"Yeah, don't rub that in," Louise protested.
"The problem is that, to you, it all seemed real. You were into him. You thought that he was into you. But what if, to him, this was all just vacation sex."
"Ouch!" Louise protested. "Why would he do that?"
"Sorry! But just consider the possibility. He goes back home, and mother is waiting to take care of her little boy and stuff him back into her smothering embrace."
"Okay," Louise was listening, but the idea seemed far-fetched.
Terri continued: "In the end, though, he realized that he can't fall in love with another woman because his heart belongs to mama!"
"Oh, my goodness, that's gross!"
"I'm serious!" Terri insisted. "Latin men are like that!"
"Really?" Louise argued. "They're all into their mothers?"
"More like the mothers are into them, and they don't give control up easily."
"Okay, well, I guess I can see that," Louise admitted. "He did talk about his mother sometimes. But I don't remember thinking that it was weird."
"It's a cultural thing," Terri explained.
"I guess." Terri was probably right, but the whole idea made Louise feel even more uncomfortable.
"So, what else happened?"
"Oh!" Louise clenched her jaw for a moment before she spoke. "You're not going to like this part."
"Why? What did he do?" Terri demanded.
"He asked me why I was leaving so early. Why wouldn't I stay and have a drink and hang out and talk?"
"Yeah?"
"I told him that I had to go because I have a life."
"Okay..."
"Then he said, 'Oh, you mean the same life that you were willing to cheat on before?'"
"Oh, my God!" Terri exclaimed with a look of shock on her face.
"Yeah."
"Oh, my God! What a fucking jerk!"
"He is a jerk," Louise concurred.
"What an ASSHOLE!"
"Yep! That, too!"
Terri was livid. "I would have fucking PUNCHED him."
"Oh, don't think that I didn't want to that, too!" Louise assured her.
"What did you do?"
"I turned and walked right out of the club."
"You didn't say anything?"
"Not a word."
"Oh, Lou! Good for you! Good for you! Don't give that jerk the satisfaction of having an argument ."
"Yeah, but what he said was cold."
"It was cruel!" Terri insisted. "Hey, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I will be," Louise replied while wiping the corners of her eyes. "But you know...?"
"What?" Terri demanded. "What is it?"
"He's actually kind of right!"
"Oh, no! Lou!" Terri insisted.
Louise wasn't encouraged. "Well, if the shoe fits..."
"Lou, stop it! Please don't say that."
"I mean, I did what he accused me of doing." Louise was on the verge of tears now.
"No! It's NOT true!" Terri insisted. "When he came here to work the other time, you had no idea that he was going to run off and ditch you like that."
"I should have known," said Louise in a hushed voice.
"How COULD you have known?" Terri argued. "You had no idea that he was going to stop calling. For all you knew, he could have been your soul mate."
"I guess," Louise sobbed.
"He did everything in his power to get you to fall for him," Terri observed.
"And it worked."
"Okay, Louise! But that's not your fault. You had no idea that he was playing you. You two spent real time together. It seemed like he was into you."
"I guess."
"Now, it's completely different," Terri explained. "Now, you know what his agenda is."
"Yeah."
"He's a selfish, arrogant jerk who got you to fall in love with him, and then ditched you the minute he landed in godforsaken Uruguay. That's all he is, a heartless player."
Louise nodded.
Terri continued her rant. "And now this cruel jackass flies back up here and tries to make you feel bad for giving him your heart? I am NOT going to let you blame yourself for that."
"Okay," Louise said. "I get the message."
"Loud and clear?" Terri asked.
"Loud and clear," Louise agreed. "But I still feel stupid."
"You're NOT stupid, Louise!" Terri said forcefully. "Please don't ever say that."
"Okay."
"I mean, seriously, Lou. Can't you see? This guy is TOTALLY bad news. You really shouldn't even talk to him. Just avoid him altogether."
"Well, that's gonna be hard now that I have to work with him."
"That is a problem," Terri admitted. "Actually, I think you might have had the right idea the other day."
"What idea?" Louise asked. "What did I say?"
"You said that you wanted to quit."
'The Horse Farm'
Copyright © 2015 Daniel R. South
All Rights Reserved
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