I nodded in agreement. We hugged each other for at least a few seconds too long, and he held my face as he gave me a soft kiss on the forehead. And then I watched him get back in his car and drive away. Damn it. I should have kissed him back. Right square on the mouth. What would have been the harm? No one would have to know.
Once I got back inside my quiet room, the alcohol really hit me. Just at that moment it occurred to me that I never asked him if he was okay to drive. Not knowing where he lived, I began to worry whether or not I should call him. Luckily, after just a few minutes of me lying on the bed trying to get my bearings back, I got a text from him letting me know he was home and asking me if I was okay.
I’ve got the spins really bad, Matt.
Babe, you hardly ate anything, you need some food! Do you want me to bring you something?
YES, OMG YES I DO. DOITNOW.
I mean, God no I could NOT say that. I thanked him, but said I would order room service. I lucked out that this hotel had a local steakhouse deliver for room service and no way was I passing that up. Did he just call me babe?
Go for the Porterhouse, baby!
The friendly texts continued until we were both ready for bed. I had scheduled another branch visit on my way back home, so he said that if I needed anything at all, he would be in the office at seven a.m. He asked me to let him know once I was up and on the road. I couldn’t fall asleep, my mind was racing. I wanted to tell someone, anyone, about what had just happened even though nothing actually had happened, had it?
The next morning he sent me a Good morning text anyway. I love him.
****
Let’s get back to Cecilia, shall we? CeCe was one of the greatest gals I had never met. We knew each other and developed our friendship through a large internet message board. We joined up as newly engaged girls to plan our wedding over ten years ago and remained members ever since. She lived just south of Atlanta, but happened to work very close by.
She was just up the street from where I was staying, so I called her over to have breakfast with me at my hotel before I headed out of town. As soon as I saw her blonde hair and big smile, it was like seeing an old friend. We were acting like a couple of screechy teenage girls, gesturing wildly and just so excited to finally see each other. She had the sweetest, most genuine Georgia peach voice, yet it was so matter-of-fact. It’s like when you hear someone say, “Aww, bless your heart!” and they totally mean for you to go fuck yourself. We started off chatting about our kids for a while, and moved on to some current message board drama. Then I took a deep breath and lowered my voice, “Listen, I need to tell you something. I think I’m in trouble, CeCe.”
“Well, come sit next to me! I’m all ears!”
“I met someone last night. Okay, well not really, I met him back in February, although I’ve actually known him about a year, oh Jesus, this is way too complicated. Anyway, we went out for a group thing last night at work and I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I cannot stop thinking about this man. I just wanted to kiss him so bad.”
I kept waiting for her to slap me upside the head or something but instead she just cocked her head and said, “AND…?” And so I explained how we worked together, his job and where his office was, and then I googled him to show her what he looked like.
“Oh my God, you idiot! Why didn’t you just do it? Why don’t you go over to his office now, six blocks that-a-way and just kiss him?!” she cried.
I was dumbfounded. “Good grief, woman! You are supposed to be reminding me that I’m married, he’s married, we’re all married and nobody needs to be kissing anyone up in here!”
“Well you aren’t dead!” she argued. “You’ve been unhappy for freaking ever, everyone knows that. It’s not that crazy that you would find yourself attracted to someone else, and you are six hours away from home. As long as it was just a kiss, what’s the harm? As long you both know that it can’t go any further than that, what’s a little kiss between friends?”
“You are so not helping me here, CeCe.”
She started cracking jokes about how bad I could have been, which made me feel a lot less guilty. But we were laughing so hard we had tears streaming down our faces and were apparently disturbing everyone else trying to have their coffee and waffles in peace.
I hugged Cecilia goodbye and headed out of the parking lot toward Augusta. I sat there at the stop sign for at least a minute trying to decide if I wanted to make a right turn and head up to the branch or not. But what would I even do when I got there and I saw him again? What if he hadn’t wanted to kiss me and he just had a little too much to drink the night before? Oh God, what if he would actually be offended? How on earth would I explain why I was there as our other co-workers started to arrive? No, I needed to go left, and fast, and get on the road.
Not five minutes into my trip, he called me and asked me how breakfast with my friend was. I told him it was a blast and that he got mentioned in our conversation. I figured his curiosity would be piqued now.
“Oh, really? How so?”
“I was just telling her how much fun I had last night and how cute and funny you are.”
“Did you tell her I look like Obama?”
“Indeed I did. I told her that you think you look like Obama.” (He doesn’t.)
He laughed and reminded me to be careful on the road and to let him know when I arrived in Augusta. I promised him that I would, but my mind was consumed with all of the possible excuses I could think of to turn my car around. I had to see him again. I would only need a minute; I just wanted a little kiss. Even when I was halfway to Augusta, I considered calling him. What if I asked him to meet me in the middle? What if I simply reversed direction and told the Augusta branch that I ran into some major traffic delay? “Sorry, folks, I’m going to be about two hours late, there was a dangerously hot man in a silver BMW blocking my entire lane…” No, I couldn’t do that. What kind of person was I? Jesus!
I wrapped up my Augusta branch visit as quickly as possible and headed back home. There were some friendly texts between us, mostly just me reassuring him that Atlanta was, in fact, the most fun of the branches I had visited so far that year. He sent a few let me know that you are okay and that you got home kinds of things. I wasn’t sure how it was possible, but I missed him already. I just missed being in his presence. I had only been away from home for 36 hours but I felt like so much had changed somehow in such a short time. The long drive home (I took a wrong turn so it was extra-long!) gave me a lot of time to think about my current situation.
Chapter Two
Nate and I had been great friends since we were back in high school. I was already dating a boy named Bryan, a skater, since my sophomore year. But since I was very much into the alternative music scene and Bryan wasn’t, Nate and I became fast friends. He was tall, had beautiful blue eyes and an absolute mess of crazy curly hair on top of his head. I was pretty sure he was gay. Most people thought so because he was artsy-fartsy and had his own unique style of dress, very preppy in that Morrissey sort of way. He wore thrift shop clothes and wingtip shoes before it was the thing to do back in the 90’s. My boyfriend knew of him and wasn’t threatened in the least. Nate was friends with all of the ladies, and he was content to hang out with us and listen to records, but he never made passes at us. He said he had a girlfriend at a neighboring high school, but I never saw her.
I dated Bryan for seven years throughout high school and into my early twenties. During those years, I dated other boys, usually much older ones. I would pick a big fight with him so we would “break up” and then I could feel justified anytime I found myself interested in someone else. But it was never Nate. I always went back to Bryan. He was my safety, and all I had ever known, plus he treated me like a queen. However, Nate and I remained good friends the entire time.
Over time it became clear to me that Bryan was kind of… simple. I always knew he wasn’t a rocket scientist, but as we aged and he began to plan our future together, I withdrew
from him. He had no real career aspirations and no intention of going to college. I had worked my ass off full-time since I was 16, while attending high school and now college courses at night. I had no desire to take care of a grown man. I had watched my mother do that for years with various long-term relationships, and I was not about to fall into that pattern. So, I had to let Bryan go.
Nate and I had spent many Sundays at Schoolkids Records perusing the used CD section looking for bargains, and the Sunday following my break-up with Bryan was no different. We ended up back at his house after, in his room on the 3rd floor, probably watching MTV or old Letterman skits on VHS tapes. I’m not sure how it happened, exactly, because I had never found him particularly attractive before. I guess I was just rebounding from my breakup, but we ended up sleeping together. That was the beginning of my first “friends with benefits” relationship, well, ever.
This went on for a few months and I started to feel like maybe I was where I was supposed to be. We were very close friends, we had a ton in common: music, movies, TV, books, political views, everything really. Nate was very smart, although he never applied himself in an academic way. But he was exceptionally creative, clever, and witty. He was an excellent musician and could do anything with his hands. He was a good person, a very kind, gentle man. The type of guy you could see being a very caring dad, although I wasn’t considering having kids anytime soon, if ever.
Nate and I became and actual item back in 1996. We got kittens and moved into an apartment together. Sex was pretty good between us at first. I had some issues, but he was aware and respectful of them in general. We were both very independent. We had our own hobbies and friends and made similar salaries, so things seemed to fall into place pretty easily for us. We went out with our friends often and attended many concerts, following our favorite alt-rock bands around neighboring states. Nate was also in several bands around town with guys he had grown up with. We lived in a few different apartments in the city, and eventually we added a golden retriever to the mix and bought a 1917 fixer-upper for a steal over in Oakwood. I knew that as great as he was working with his hands, Nate would have it completely remodeled in no time.
He really did try at first. He started in the kitchen and got about 90% of the way through renovating it then stopped. He moved on to another room that was more exciting, finished about 90% of it and then stopped. Completely. He did this in pretty much every room in the house until I was ready to smother him in his sleep. I used to call him Mr. 90% Man. He never finished anything because he got frustrated or bored with it and left a never-ending trail of sawdust and debris all over the floor in his wake. It seemed he enjoyed the dreaming up and project planning process far more than the actual execution. The repairs he did make took three times longer and were three times more costly than he planned, and eventually I stopped allowing money to be spent on ideas that were never going to come to fruition. That always caused a lot of friction between us, but he was also unwilling to get involved in our finances at all, which forced me to become the gatekeeper and the “dreamkiller” as he lovingly referred to me.
We eventually married after nearly seven years of being together. It just seemed like the thing to do. Most of our friends were getting married, and we still managed to get along pretty well. It was definitely never the crazy, passionate, romantic sort of love you see in the movies, but I assumed that everyone felt that way after being together for seven years. It had taken him a really long time to propose. I probably should have seen his unwillingness to commit as a red flag. Not that he didn’t love me, but that he was incredibly fearful of change. Any change.
After three years of marriage, I was ready to have kids. He wasn’t sure, but he said he would leave it up to me to decide when. He was still working for the same place, a small cabinet making company, making about the same amount of money with zero benefits. I had moved around more and ended up with my current company but was making nearly twice as much in salary as when I had started there. Being the planner that I was, I saved up two years’ worth of daycare expenses before I even got pregnant. I read fertility books, took my temperature every day, and timed it out, right down to the Shettles method of getting a girl. So, when I finally got pregnant after about seven months, I was ecstatic. I ran to tell him the good news and he seemed shocked and shouted “What?! How did this happen?” Not exactly the reaction I had hoped for. His shitty attitude put a damper on pretty much my entire pregnancy, and it was a real sore spot for us. He said he wasn’t exactly unhappy about it, just worried about how this was going to change his life.
Luckily, when Claire was born, she had him wrapped around her finger pretty quickly. She was a gorgeous baby, very happy and a great sleeper, and other than when she was teething, things were pretty good for several years. We went back and forth for months over whether or not we should have another child. I really wanted Claire to have a sibling. After a few months of “seeing what happens,” I got pregnant. Nate, again, seemed surprised by this chain of events. I was starting to think he missed a few videos in middle school health class. I ended up having a miscarriage after just a few weeks. I was upset about it, of course, which only made me more certain that I wanted to have another child. Ruby was born that next year.
We both had a hard time adjusting to two children. It was a lot more work for me, mentally and physically, just so much more crap to carry and to have to keep track of. If one child was sleeping, the other was resisting, and they were both extremely early risers. I was always on edge and definitely had a touch of the baby blues for several months, but I felt like I got used to the new routine eventually. Nate never seemed to recover. He was constantly starved for affection and attention and, like most moms of two young kids, I was completely touched out and tapped out. He barely saw his friends anymore, gave up his hobbies, and made me the center of his universe. It was incredibly suffocating. That, combined with being responsible for two small kids and a house full of pets was exhausting at best, and to have to handle all the financial and household decisions on top of being the breadwinner was enough to make for one cranky-ass wife.
It became clear to me that I had lost a lot of myself over the years. I used to be funny; I used to be silly. My friends and colleagues still thought I was most of the time. But I used to know how to socialize and relax and have a good time. I even used to like sex, I think. I wanted to be with someone who was fun and who thought I was fun. Nate never thought I was fun anymore. In fact, he had reminded me many times just how unfun I was. I was too busy being everyone’s mother, including his.
Coming back from my branch visits, I realized that I hadn’t had to make a single decision over the last 36 hours. Matt had taken care of everything. What to drink, what to eat, where to go, how to get there, he took care of me. It was glorious.
Matt and I had talked a little bit about my marriage before. Not in depth, we were just “work friends” at that time, about nine months prior to my visit. My husband had gotten a wild hair across his ass and just decided to quit his job of 16 years with no warning, with no job to go to, in the middle of an economic downturn. I was livid. I was ready to put him right out on the street back then, but I couldn’t put him out with no job and no money. I never got over that anger.
I remember I told Matt about it just a few days after it happened. He caught me on a really bad day and I wasn’t my normal, cheerful self. “Mal, are you okay, hon? What’s going on with you?” He made me feel instantly comfortable confiding in him. It was so easy; really, even his voice was incredibly soothing to me. He asked me thoughtful questions and seemed genuinely concerned about me. He asked if there was anything he could do to help us, suggesting he send Nate’s resume around. He knew a lot of people. I thanked him, but said that Nate had some interviews coming up and hopefully something would work out soon. I remember he told me how awesome and supportive of a wife I was. That’s pretty laughable now.
Once I was back home from my branch visits, Matt and I began talking and te
xting a lot more often. Sometimes he’d skip the formality of pretending he had a work-related question, and we’d just go right into our chats about music, the latest “Mad Men” (the parallels of our developing relationship and that plot line were hard to ignore), more cooking, shopping, and especially shoes. I loved shoes. I even helped him find his Ferragamo oxfords online. For two people 14 years apart in age, we seemed to have an awful lot in common. We both shared the same brand of sardonic wit, and we loved to make others laugh. At the same time, we could launch into the nerdiest of investment or political discussions. I found him intellectually stimulating as well as just… stimulating.
Then, one day he got up to shut his office door. He got sort of quiet and then he said what I had been waiting to hear and what I had been thinking to myself for weeks.
“You know, Mal… I’ve been thinking. I would really like to get a chance to hang out with you again.”
“Really?” I perked right up.
“Yeah, we had a really good time together, didn’t we?”
“Oh definitely! I loved being down there with you. That was the most fun I had had in, well, probably since I saw you at the conference,” I laughed.
“Well, you know, you made quite an impression on me too,” he paused and lowered his voice even more. “I can’t stop thinking about you, actually.”
My stomach immediately started doing flips. Well, since he brought it up… “You remember that morning that I met CeCe for breakfast?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, when I was telling her about you, I may have told her that I just wanted to grab you and kiss you so bad that night. I felt like you did too, but I figured maybe we had too much to drink and I just imagined it,” I confessed. “But now I’m kicking myself for not turning the car around. I came so close to calling you and telling you. I wanted to tell you. I bet I thought about it 100 times driving home.”
The Other Other Woman Page 3