The Bighead Read Online Free PDF Page A

state took custody because she
didn’t make enough money. I would’ve been better off staying with
her, though, I’m certain of it.”
    “ I guess you miss your
aunt, not seeing her for so long.”
    “ Yeah, well, kind of. It’s
been twenty years, and after that much time, a person becomes only
a vague memory. I mean, I still remember her—believe it or not, I
still remember so much about home—but it’s so distant it doesn’t
seem real. That’s why I’m a little bit nervous. I’m not sure what
it’s going to be like seeing her again, and seeing
Luntville.”
    “ Well, you’re certainly
entitled to be nervous,” Jerrica offered, but she could imagine how
phony that sounded. What did she know about the real world? Raised
in Potomac by millionaire parents, private schools her whole life,
a brand-new Z28 for her sixteenth birthday. I don’t know shit, she
admitted.
    “ So what were you saying?”
Charity asked next. “About this guy Micah?”
    Wow. Not it was Jerrica’s turn. All at once, though, and
considering Charity’s own confession, she felt remarkably open. “A
real fox, thirty, good job—he works for a bio-engineering firm in
Bethesda. A prime catch, for sure. And, well, he was dynamite in
bed.”
    Charity blushed slightly
and obviously quickened to recover. “But didn’t you say that you were the one who
broke off the engagement?”
    Jerrica’s mind raced to figure it out.
“I don’t know, it’s hard to say. I—I threw him out.”
    “ Why?”
    More faltering. Be honest! she demanded
of herself. And what did it matter? Charity was someone she’d just
met and would probably never see again after this trip. Jerrica lit
another Salem, set her teeth and blinked. “He caught
me.”
    “ Caught you?”
    “ He caught me with two
other guys. I was cheating on him.”
    Charity’s face seemed to tint in
confusion. “But I thought you just said he was—”
    “ Yeah, I know, I said he
was dynamite in bed. It’s true. But…I guess I have a problem. I
mean, I loved the guy, I still do. But I cheated on him right and left, and I’ve
cheated on every boyfriend I’ve ever had. It was never about love,
it was never about Micah not giving me what I needed. It
was…something else. I don’t know. Maybe I’m a sex addict or
something.”
    “ Maybe you should see a
counselor,” Charity suggested.
    Ordinarily, Jerrica
would’ve fumed. But, for some reason, Charity saying it was
different. “Micah suggested the same thing, he wanted me to go to
Sex Addicts Anonymous or some shit, and I just couldn’t see myself
sitting in the middle of that. And I’d been to some counselors for a while in the
past, but I never got anything out of it.” Her thoughts backtracked
then. Wait a minute… Is that what I am? A
sex addict? It sounded so cliched, just
another excuse of the modern age to pursue indulgence and
recklessness. Nothing was weakness anymore; it was all a “disease”;
alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, for Christ’s sake, eating too
much. And sex too. Shit, in this day and age, even shoplifting was
a disease! Jerrica couldn’t believe that, not even considering her
own indiscretions.
    And there’d been many.
    She’d kept a tally, hadn’t
she? Over five hundred since she’d lost her virginity at
sixteen. Five hundred. And she was only twenty-eight. Obliquely, then, she tried to
explain. “I don’t know what comes over me. When I’m with a man,
it’s like I become a different person. I need… I need the
sensation, the stimulation. At least I guess that’s what it is.”
She’d read something once, in Cosmo, about how some people were
“sensualists.” They craved the feelings administered by others.
More excuses to exploit the human self. Jerrica didn’t believe it
for a minute. But then…
    She didn’t know what she
believed.
    And only then did she
realize what she was saying in the first place. My God, her thoughts croaked. Charity
was, essentially, a stranger, and here