Ya Gotta Read Between the Lines, (you gotta think things over)

the surpise at hearing the modern term for a woman's belly, post child birth I discovered is: mommy belly which inspired me to write this non fictional piece

“I like you a lot, but your Mommy belly turns me off.”
She sat across from him for a moment. Incredulous of what she had just heard. It had only been a week, their second “date.” The first at work. She and he had, what she thought, “bonded.” Shortly thereafter he’d asked her out to dinner. And here they were, having ordered. He was making small talk about work.
And then the slap.
“What the F**k!” Had she really heard that?
“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
“I love you. It’s fun being with you. You’re pretty; I love your laugh, your smile, I just said, I’d like you more, if you got rid of your Mommy belly.”

“This is some icebreaker!” She thought, feeling heat inside her ears, on her cheeks, burning hot on her face. She bolted up almost ripping the white linen off the tabletop. Subconsciously, she sensed shock and stares emanating from proximal quarters of the restaurant. She forced her mind to overcome any potential encroachment of filter or interference. 
“F**K YOU, Frank. The two f’s sounded like an alliteration of angry poetry. It was impossible to suppress the second involuntary reflex. 
“F**K YOU! She repeated. With a look of indignation fit for a haughty queen and the hatred of a marine drill sergeant, she threw her white linen napkin full force at his bewildered face. And with fluid motion spun about-face to the exit of the fine dining, 5 star restaurant.
Frank sat there hopelessly wearing the vestige of a beaten puppy. He was not oblivious as Leslie had been; he felt the stares of the patronage on his face. Some astonished mostly; some resentful at having had their meal disrupted with the obnoxiously loud usage of the F word which he, they logically surmised, was the precipitant. 
He sat there for a while feeling supremely self-consciousness, resisting the barbaric urge to verbally assault his spectators, “What the f. . . k are you staring at?!” 
But he composed himself, waited for the check and attempted to leave discreetly. He thought he could simply walk across the dining room toward the exit and almost succeeded in this endeavor. By his estimation, he was fifteen or so steps before the foyer and freedom when an elderly woman stopped him with unsolicited advice, “You know young man, you’re lucky she didn’t toss a meal at you! 
She looked condescendingly across the dinner table at her husband and continued in a quite serious tone, “Fred here, my husband wore spaghetti one night at dinner when he complained about the amount of salt I had used. Isn’t that right Fred?”
Fred looked cautiously at his 80-year-old wife and nodded obediently.
The usually simple act of exiting a restaurant required an unreasonable courage under these circumstances. He was still the center of attention as curious onlookers continued to follow his moves toward the doors.
Leslie had maneuvered her way out to the parking lot. She sat crying tears of hurt in her SUV wondering what had just happened.
She pushed the ignition key of her Lexus and cursed. “How dare that f****r. He likes me, my personality . . . the back part of my body, but apparently only when my fat belly and me are not facing him. Whoever heard of a Mommy’s belly?” 
“How about his protruding belly?!” 
I’m 38 years old. I’ve had 2 kids! I’ve got a right to have a belly!”
She was frequently at the gym, on a fastidious level of effort. She had withheld the urge to eat bread and limit her carbohydrate input for over three years now. Yes, she had cheated during the holidays and times of stress, but she was only human. Tinges of self-pity began to infuse her thinking. Try as hard as she could to prevent yielding to weakness, she broke out in sobs. 
Her eyes were tear filled as she drove through the streets of the rain-drenched city. She was heading back to her suburbs. It was difficult to see between the tears and the rain pelting the streets. 
She pushed her cell phone button.
“Hi Karla. I need someone to cry on.”
Three minutes of cellular communication and Karla had the full scoop.
“Don’t be stupid Les, a tummy tuck for that idiot? Why don’t you insist he castrate himself if you get a tummy tuck?” 
Karla was typically visceral when it came to her friends’ defenses and didn’t pull any punches.
“I’ve tried losing it Karla, crunches, Zumba, water aerobics, Flat Belly Diet . . . everything. I just can’t lose it!” 
Karla had other pressing matters on her own hands and the call was terminated.
With another push of a button on her steering column, Leslie tuned in to FM radio. She caught part of the song’s verse . . . I’ll take you just the way you are . . . da, da dum dumm . . . Don’t go changin’ to try and please me . . . I want you just the way you are . . . “ 
“Billy Joel, Yes. Thank you!”
She nostalgically thought. “I’m me. I gave birth to two beautiful boys. I deserve better!” With this conviction, she clenched her hands on the steering wheel and resumed crying.
Karla had made her laugh and feel better. She had used her own body’s imperfections to build up her BFF. Karla had talked about the sagging underneath her upper arms. She had said, “Leslie, don’t worry about him. Sure, I want thin arms; they’re huge . . . can’t get rid of them short of surgery and I’m not doin’ it. They wiggle like jello when I walk and so does my 45-year-old cottage cheese a*s. Hey, my husband loves me the way I am. Frank can take a hike.” 
Leslie especially enjoyed the castration line Karla had blurted out and laughed out loud at her friend’s remarks. Karla always made her feel better! She stopped crying.
Her blue tooth device rang. It was Frank.
She let it ring 5 or 6 times refusing to answer before she clicked accept. 
“Ah hello. Leslie. Yeah. Why’d you walk out on me. You humiliated . . .
“F**K you Frank! F**k you again and again! 
“Don’t ever talk to me!”
She hung up.
Frank continued driving on his route home. He suddenly had an impulse to hit one of his favorite bars. He pulled his car spontaneously a hard left; he grabbed for a Marlboro, lowered his passenger’s side window to whiff the clean night air and lit the cigarette.
He turned his radio on, hit seek a couple of times before letting it go. He inhaled deeply to calm his nerves. He felt jaded. He didn’t understand what he had said that was so offensive to Leslie. He had a slight idea, but, “Damn, what the hell, why does she have to get so fired up over a little suggestion?” 
A few radio commercials later, he reached to push seek again when a song came on. He was ready to change the station but he liked the melody. .. . I wanna know what love is . . . I gotta take a little time…a little time to think things over . . .”Wow,” he thought. “I love this song, the way he sings, painfully, like a wolf at the moon. Epic, love the sweeping grandeur of the music . . . spine tingling!” 
Foreigner’s music continued to play. “I better read between the lines . . .” The song’s lyrics spoke hard to Frank: “In my life there’s been heartache and pain, I don’t know if I can face it again.”
These lines in the lyrics struck Frank with self pity. As he pulled into the bar’s parking lot to lick his wounds; he thought about how awkward it would be to face Leslie at work. He decided to formulate a strategy over a double Jameson - Neat.