The Other Other Woman

by Mallory Lockhart

  “I don’t what it is exactly that you are trying to prove. Are you going to go back and tell her what you’ve done and then “recommit” to her? Or just live with me being your dirty little secret for the rest of your life? People don’t have affairs because they are happy and committed, Matt. They have them to escape.”

  “I know that I’m not going to be happy with her. I haven’t been for years.”

  “Then why are you doing this? So your adult children don’t get mad at you? I could understand if you really wanted to work it out with her and be happy, but you don’t. You want to destroy everything we have so you can go back home and be miserable!”

  “It’s more complicated than that. And I’m not destroying everything we have.”

  “That’s what it feels like to me.”

  “It shouldn’t.”

  “If you are telling me you are going back to your wife and you can’t see me anymore, how is it not?”

  “It’s just temporary, Mal.”

  I was getting pissed now. “Not if you ‘recommit’ to her?!”

  “But I don’t think that’s going to happen, really.”

  “Oh my God, this is so ridiculous. Do whatever it is you need to do, Matt. I can’t stop you.”

  “Babe, please don’t make this any harder.”

  “I’m not making anything hard! Maybe the problem is that I’ve made this too easy for you, because I really don’t understand this at all. I’ve done everything I could possibly do to make you happy when clearly I should have been doing something else.”

  “Honey, you are killing me here. This is not goodbye. I’m just asking for some time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Like a month. 30 days.”

  “So, what happens in 30 days when you have decided that you can’t leave because it’s too close to Christmas, but you know you don’t want to stay either? Because I can tell you with 99.9% certainty, that’s going to happen. Then what?”

  “Then I will be coming to see you as soon as humanly possible and hoping you are still willing to see me.”

  “Oh great, well then let me just hurry up and start waiting then.”

  His eyes perked up like he suddenly thought of a brand new invention. “Hey, how about this? I have a client in Virginia Beach that I’m going to have to go see pretty soon. Maybe we could take a roadtrip!”

  “What?!” I exclaimed. “Is this before or after you go back to your wife?!”

  “You know, I mean, assuming I decide not to stay…” he sort of trailed off, probably realizing all the mixed messages he was sending.

  I just shook my head, none of this made any sense. None of it.

  “No. No… You need to tell me what’s really going on here. Three weeks ago we were together and you admitted yourself that everything was perfect. Then you went home. What the hell happened? Because I know something did. I can feel it. Is it Katya? Sofia? Just tell me, please. Don’t lie to me. Not now.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I’ve seen the emails, Matt. You know I have.”

  “Look, Katya is on a plane back to Kiev right now. She doesn’t want to live in America anymore. You don’t have to worry about her. And as for Sofia, I don’t know what you think is going on there, but you are way off on her. Yeah, she’s a cute girl, I’ll give you that. But she’s actually kind of dumb and not that good of an agent; I can never even get her to call me back!”

  “So, is it someone else, then?”

  “What? No! I told you, I just need time to get my life back in order. I don’t think you realize how much stress this causes me, being constantly afraid she’s going to find out and tell the kids, and then trying to keep you from being upset at the same time. It’s too much.”

  “Hey, you pursued me. I didn’t come after you. YOU asked for my number, remember? I’m sorry I’ve become such a problem for you.”

  He reached for my face with his hands, his eyes pleading with mine for forgiveness, but I wouldn’t budge. He brought my face to his lips and kissed me deeply. At that moment I imagined this was the last time I would ever kiss him and I lost it. I tried so hard, but physically I could not accept that this was the end, and silent tears absolutely poured out of my eyes. I wiped them away as quickly as possible.

  “I don’t regret pursuing you, Mallory. Not at all,” he said softly, still cupping my tear-stained face. I just want to make things right for everyone.”

  “But you are right for me,” I replied sadly.

  “That may be true. That’s what I need to find out. But I have to go.”

  There was no changing his mind, he was going home. I still didn’t understand what had transpired over the last couple of hours. I just knew that I wasn’t ever going to be the same. We both grabbed our bags and slowly headed out of the hotel. He stopped at the desk to check out and told me to wait for him outside once I got my bags back in the car. He seemed pleased with himself when he came out because they didn’t end up charging him for the room at all. Well, good for you, I thought.

  I tried to get my emotions back in check as he leaned into my car to kiss me goodbye again. I still didn’t understand why he wanted to put his tongue in my mouth if he didn’t want me anymore, but I wasn’t going to refuse to kiss him. I still loved him even if the feeling wasn’t mutual. I clenched my jaw afterwards, trying not to cry again. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me any more upset than I had already been inside the room. I hoped that he would get in his car and immediately regret everything he had just said. I suspect that instead he felt instantly relieved that my happiness was no longer his problem.

  I sat in my car for a few minutes and watched him leave. I then broke down into ugly, heaving sobs. Both Jules and Brooke had sent me very cheerful How’s it going? texts earlier in the evening. I answered them both with my tears running down my face and dripping all over my iPhone.

  He broke up with me. He just left to go back home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jules called me within seconds. “Oh my God, what happened?”

  “I don’t even know.”

  “Well, what did he say?!?”

  “He just kept saying he needed time to sort out his life and he’s going back to Sandy but doesn’t want to. I actually have no idea what just happened,” I continued. “He said he was going to try to recommit to her, but then in the next breath he was saying we should take a road trip to Virginia. But that he couldn’t see me anymore, or at least not for 30 days.”

  “Um, what? Okay, slow down,” she said. “What is this 30-day sadistic bullshit?”

  “That’s exactly what it is,” I cried. “He said he needs me to give him 30 days without me, or at least not seeing me… talking on the phone is okay… to decide what he’s going to do. Because I’m a distraction now. I guess he’ll let me know what he’s decided in a month.”

  “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “If he needs 30 days to decide whether or not he wants me, I think we can safely assume the answer is NO.”

  “Mallory, he is an asshole bag of dicks.”

  I just cried harder. “I don’t know what to do, Jules.”

  “You need to let him go.”

  “I know, but I don’t know how. I don’t think I can.”

  “Honey, you’ve got to. This man is not going to give you what you need… ever. There is no happily ever after here. He’s a selfish jackass.”

  “I know that. I do. But when I try to picture my life without him, I feel like I’m physically going to die. I just don’t know how to get over it. I’m just so happy when I’m with him. And without him, I feel like I’m never going to be happy ever again.”

  “But you are never with him! You hardly ever see him as it is and now he wants even less of that!”

  “I know. I just don’t understand it. How he could go from the way he felt about me in Greensboro to this in just three weeks.”

  “Alzheimer’s?” she blurted out
, adding, “Sorry. Bad timing.”

  “There’s got to be something else going on, something he’s not telling me. I don’t think dealing with Ivan would cause him to act this way. I mean, he was still kissing me, putting his hands all over my face. He looked really, I don’t know, sad… like he had no choice. He had tears in his eyes and his voice was cracking so either he was really upset or the man deserves a fucking Oscar. It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “When has he ever?! Do you think it’s Katya Bitchface?”

  “Oh my gosh! I forgot about that! He told me she’s on a plane back to Ukraine!”

  “What!? Is he serious?”

  “He seemed serious. Said she’s moving back there. I hope he doesn’t think I’m so stupid that I’m just going to take his word for it. You know I’m going to check!”

  “Mal, what does it even matter at this point? After all this?”

  “Well, no, when you put it that way, it doesn’t. He could be screwing the entire city of Atlanta but it makes no difference if he’s dumping me. But I still want to know, just for me, I guess.”

  “I am so fucking tired of him hurting you. I wish you could see how much better you are than him.”

  I know she was trying to be comforting, but it really wasn’t helping. You never want to hear that someone you love is a horrible piece of shit. And like I had told both her and myself for months, she had never met him. If she had, she would see what he was really like. Brooke loved him, too. I mean, not the way I did, but she didn’t think he was a horrible human being. We couldn’t both be wrong. In fact, everyone I knew seemed to love him.

  I don’t know how I managed to make it home that night. Once I arrived, I immediately headed upstairs. I took a bunch of melatonin and went straight to bed. While waiting for it to kick in, I wondered how the hell I was going to hold it together to get my kids in the morning. Or even how to hold it together in general for them. My older daughter was an extremely sensitive and perceptive little girl. I had never cried in front of her. It would have made her anxiety go through the roof, considering how much ugliness she had already had to witness from the separation. The separation that I caused. Over a man who left me after just a few short months.

  Not surprisingly, I didn’t hear a word from him all weekend. You would think that if you cared about someone, you might call to check on them after dropping an atomic bomb in their lap like that. But no, I guess he was too busy reconciling and being miserable with his wife. It struck me how everything was his decision. “I have to decide what I want to do.” If she knew about his indiscretions, would she even want to stay with him? To me, it seemed very unfair that she had no say at all. She was completely unaware of some very important details.

  Around dinnertime on Sunday night I finally got a text from him that made me want to throw my phone across the room and smash it to pieces. Hi Mal. Just wanted you to know that I had a 2 hr mtg with my son yesterday. He says all the right stuff but I don’t buy it until he proves it. Anyway, hope your day is good.

  I must have missed the part where he put I’m sorry or I didn’t mean it or, even better, ARE YOU OKAY?

  I sent it to Jules and Brooke and they both agreed that was the most craptacular post-breakup message they had ever seen. I didn’t bother to respond. It seemed the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in the case of young Ivan.

  I didn’t end up hearing from him until Tuesday or Wednesday, and by then, I didn’t want to talk to him. I was so incredibly hurt that he would have just left me hanging like that for days, knowing how upset I was, knowing how I didn’t want any of this. He stuck to very general topics and tried to keep the conversation light. He told me that Ivan was staying with some family friends, the Lauchners. They had two teenage girls living in the house and an older son who had moved out. I remember thinking who in their right mind would let that kid in around their teenage daughters? But whatever. At least he was safe and Matt didn’t have to deal with him for the time being.

  I reminded him that I still had his bottles of garlic sauce that he bought from the winery. He asked me to hold one of them for him, and I told him I would but only for a high ransom. I secretly envisioned cracking it over his stupid head and watching it run down his precious little curls. He tried to flirt with me, telling me we would work out a compromise for him to get it back. Maybe I would just mail it.

  By the end of the week it was evident to everyone who knew me that I was not doing well. I kept my door closed all day. Miranda kept coming in to check on me, asking what was wrong. I said I was having some family issues. But you could tell she wasn’t buying it. I had already told her all about my family and anything related to my impending divorce so it’s not like I was suddenly going to become shy. Brooke was flipping out because she could not even ask me if I was okay without me bursting into tears and becoming completely incoherent and incapable of forming words into a sentence. I know she was ready to go in there and put her foot square in his ass. She finally convinced me that I needed to talk to him again. That I needed to ask him point blank if we were through. Because he had flip-flopped so much, I still wasn’t sure what he was actually asking of me. If he wanted to be friends, he wasn’t treating me like the close friend that I was. He treated me like someone he had to handle with kid gloves for fear I might call up his wife in a fit of rage. I started to wonder if that was why he was keeping me hanging on altogether. Fear of me telling. Jules was 100% sure that was exactly what he was doing, but I hoped beyond hope that she was wrong.

  That Friday he texted me after lunch. Hey, how goes it today?

  I’ve been better.

  He called me right away.

  “Hey, sweetie”

  “Hey.”

  “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  “What do you mean, what’s wrong? What do you think is wrong, Matt? This whole thing is wrong.”

  “When we talked earlier in the week, I thought you were okay. What happened?”

  “No, I am definitely not okay with this. Not at all.”

  “I don’t understand why you are so upset. Nothing has really changed.”

  “You broke up with me. Am I not allowed to be sad or upset about that?”

  “No, I didn’t! That’s not what I meant!”

  “What!?”

  “I never said we were breaking up, just taking a step back.”

  “What planet are you on, exactly? When you don’t want to sleep with your girlfriend and you tell her it’s because you are going back to your WIFE, how is that just a step back?”

  “I told you I just need you to bear with me and be my friend right now.”

  “You know, why did you even take me to the winery? Why did you spend the whole goddamn day getting my hopes up that everything was fine and then do that?”

  “Because I wanted to see you and spend time with you.”

  I heard his office phone ringing. “Listen, babe, I’ve got to take this. I’ll be back.”

  “Fine.”

  I hung up. A little while later a text arrived. I will need to call you back later to finish convo. Don’t be sad, babe. Just because I am overloaded with drama at this moment.

  Like any normal person would, I assumed I would hear from him later that night or at least early Saturday. But I didn’t hear a single word from him all weekend. Hate really doesn’t even cover what I was feeling for him. It was hate mixed with the most overwhelming sadness I had ever felt in my life. How could everything we had together, including our long friendship, be reduced to this in just a matter of months? Someone who couldn’t wait to hear my voice and laugh with me first thing every morning was now trying to avoid talking to me at all costs. And I had no idea what I had done wrong.

  I was so upset most of the time. I was having a very hard time hiding it, especially from my kids. My oldest told my mom that whenever she would go to bed she knew I was crying in my room.

  Tattletale.

  One afternoon, we were standing in my kitchen when my mom
asked me what was going on. She knew how relieved I was in general over my impending divorce. I lost it and ended up telling her everything. I figured she would be pretty angry with me for breaking up my family over some other man. Even though by that time, she saw how dependent Nate was and agreed our split was for the best. But she couldn’t say much when she saw the tears pouring down my face. Her daughter who never, ever cried. She simply said, “Well, did I ever tell you about Kenny?”

  “Kenny? That guy you dated for like three years?” I was just a young kid at the time, but I totally remembered him being this super fun guy that used to let us wrestle him.

  “Yep. Same situation.”

  “He was married?!”

  “Yep.”

  “What happened?”

  “We broke up but he wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept promising me he was going to leave her. He was a cop, so he would find every man I tried to date and run them off. He kept following me around, and I finally told his wife. She was pregnant, so she stayed with him anyway. He’s the reason we moved here. I had to get away from all that.”

  “Holy crap!”

  I was speechless. And suddenly, I didn’t feel so stupid and ashamed anymore. My situation was more common than I ever realized.

  At 8:45 a.m. Monday, he texted. He knew I was going to be pissed. I had an even more drama filled weekend. I’m sorry I was too busy to talk but I really had no big block of time. So I can continue our talk today when we have time.

  A text saying so would have made a big difference.

  Yes, I am sorry about that. I was helping my son’s best friend. His girlfriend was attacked by 2 sleazy guys on Friday.

  Oh come on. That had to be complete bullshit. What was he doing, cradling the kid in his arms, comforting him around the clock, so he couldn’t reach his phone? Brooke said he still managed to get his hair trimmed up a little.