Wyoming. Heartbreak. Part Two.

Part One is Here.

We made arrangements. Big Jerk would fly to San Diego and meet me at my parent’s home. Meanwhile, his mom and aunt and grandma (oh my!) would drive from Los Angeles to reunite with the Jerk for a day before he left the state again. And BOY, did they show up. Three strong, Hispanic women accustomed to raising momma’s boys. His mom, kind of an anal over-achiever with a hoarder mentality, brought 321 dishes to contribute to the barbecue my family put together to send us off. In she walked with potato salads (American and German), macaroni salad, bean salad, endive salad, fruit salad, iceberg lettuce salad, salad salad, and 15 bags of assorted rolls, breads, crackers, cheeses, and jelly beans. It all made a nice addition to the mixed nuts and jug of lemonade my mom put on the table. And then we all sat down to awkward conversation and breathing in Jerk’s 92-year-old grandmother’s chain smoke.

After the lunch of one thousand side dishes, Big Jerk presented me with a gold Claddagh ring and professed his undying love. He’d turned his life around, he said. No more cheating, he promised. No more offering to help random women move and then sleeping with them the same day he met them. No proclaiming endless love one day and breaking up with me the next because, “he was damaged and not worthy.” Only love now, he smiled. Only you and me together. I get it now, he nodded sagely.

I chose to believe him even if it was the hundredth time I’d heard those same words. I put the flimsy ring on and tried not to liken the floppy cheap gold to our relationship.

I spent the rest of that day choosing to believe him, despite catching sight of my brother shaking his head in the background. I kinda thought maybe this time. I didn’t want to fast forward to the inevitable. So I gathered my things, stuffed them in suitcases, and prepared for the morning.

We’d only scheduled one day to spend at my house before we packed up the Hyundai and left for the first leg of our trip. We’d penciled out a route that had us in Salt Lake City by the end of the first driving day, and to make that itinerary, we’d need to leave at the crack of dawn.

So with the weight of 15 salads still in my gut and a “maybe this time” pulling at my heart, we set off. Everything I owned made it into the back of the car, and our front seats pushed against a 32-inch Zenith TV, 18,000 pairs of shoes, and 1,200 journals. It was all very “Breaking Away” without the small-town boy, bike, and Italy. Still, I expected a new start, a bright future, a relationship with the Big Jerk that’d last longer than two months at a time.

We’d been together see, off and on, for more than two years. But every 60 days or so — usually less — some infidelity or dick move on his part broke us apart again. As I drove, I tried not to laundry list the hurt — a girl’s ring and a note I found in his car the year before, a photo of someone he’d visited in Santa Barbara when he was supposed to be seeing me in Los Angeles, a phone call from a heart he broke while we were still dating. Friends and family tried to intervene — DON’T GET BACK TOGETHER AGAIN — but I was 24, and frankly a Class A dumb ass.
And so now, we were driving to Chicago together…

{Longest back story ever, right? Way to say Part One ALL OVER AGAIN just with different words, right? Get to the point, right? Really? Continued AGAIN, right?}

{{I blame the Girl Scouts.}}

Part Three here.