Emily’s mom texted me using Emily’s phone. She wanted me to unblock her. I ignored it. Then she asked again, promising not to bring up Emily if I would just unblock her.
I gave in and texted her that I was still alive, had no plans to change that, and that I’d unblock her later so we could talk. I made it clear I only wanted to chat about me or her, not Emily. I told her I needed a break from all of this and she should be patient. Then Emily texted me with a half-hearted “I’m sorry you hurt” message, which wasn’t very comforting.
Her texts, combined with the fact that her mom was using her phone to reach me, told me she was at her parents’ house now. Several hours of silence passed. Then Emily texted me to check my email. I found it in my spam folder.
She wrote a long letter trying to explain herself. I read it with a racing mind, commenting between the lines the way I had before, because going no contact made this my only way to process it. She wrote that she kept thinking about how this couldn’t be real, how it couldn’t just be over, and how I shut her out like she was nothing to me. She said it was killing her.
I remember thinking, yeah, that’s the idea. It sucks when the one you love abandons you. She said she talked with her dad and her sister-in-law’s husband. She told them she never loved John and always loved me.
They laughed and said that didn’t matter at all. She felt stupid. She admitted she knew she didn’t deserve a response, but she begged me to read her email, to not delete it, because she needed me to hear her out. She claimed she didn’t want to explain it as an excuse, but she wanted me to know she never stopped loving me.
She admitted she messed up and betrayed me in a way she couldn’t take back. But she insisted it wasn’t because she didn’t love me. She said it wasn’t about love, and it wasn’t even about sex. She claimed she was pressured and felt obligated.
I couldn’t help my sarcastic reaction to that part. She told me John didn’t just walk into her life and sweep her off her feet. He inserted himself. He helped her business when she was struggling, connected her with the right people, helped with her lease and vendor contracts, got her meetings she could never have gotten on her own.
She let herself believe he was just a mentor. She told herself it would be one time, and that would be enough. But it wasn’t enough, and she didn’t know how to get out. She kept telling him no, but he always made her feel ungrateful, like she was selfish for not giving him what he wanted after everything he did for her.
I remember writing that we have a word for people who trade sex for goods and services. She said Christmas and New Year’s Eve happened, and that’s when she knew he wouldn’t stop, so she ended it. By then, everything was messed up. She knew she had to tell me, but she also knew that the second she did, I would never look at her the same way.
She couldn’t handle that. She knew I suspected something ever since New Year’s Eve, but she just put her head down and hoped it would go away. She brought up Charleston. The little bed and breakfast where I hated the coffee.
The gas station where we stopped for half an hour just so I could get a normal cup. The seafood shack by the water, laughing at the seagulls trying to steal our food. I wrote back that I remembered that weekend. I also remembered when she wasn’t sleeping with other guys.
That was a swell time too. She said she didn’t expect me to take her back. She said she would sign whatever I wanted and give me whatever I wanted, but she begged me not to disappear, not to pretend she never mattered. To me, the offer to sign sounded like a trap.
I told her I loved her too, but I needed her to get out of my life for both our sakes. Please, Emily. After I sent it, I reread my comments and felt like a heartless bastard. I’m just tired, I guess.
I noticed what she never mentioned in the email. No mention of John’s credit card. No mention of how the affair wasn’t fun for her anymore. No mention of how she was supposed to be handling me.
A lot of it sounded like the Emily I used to know, maybe even with some truth in it. But she was downplaying her role, acting like this all happened to her, like she wasn’t an active participant. She chose to sleep with this guy because she felt obligated and he did her favors. She tried to change the narrative so we were both victims instead of just me.
Here’s the thing. Part of me wants to believe her. That she was just a victim of John. But that doesn’t change the fact that she slept with him for almost a year.
If I forgive that, then what am I? So I told her to just sign the papers and let’s move on. She’s young, she’s beautiful, she has no kids, she’s a successful business owner, and she has a whole wardrobe of fancy designer clothes courtesy of her sugar daddy. She’s killing it at life.
Go live somewhere far away from me. No one accidentally has an affair for almost a year. She knew what she was doing. Now that she’s facing the consequences, she wants to shift the narrative.
The worst part is she almost made me question my own reality, wondering if I should feel sorry for her. That’s how good some people are at manipulation. My friends took me out on the town after that. I told them ahead of time I wouldn’t be drinking.
They informed me ahead of time that they would be. Oh well. Jim is my friend from high school who knew both Emily and me. He’s married.
He was floored that Emily did this. Matt is a groom I met years ago when Emily was early in her career, before John. A bride’s hair and makeup artist had bailed at the last minute, and my wife jumped in because she was the first person someone called who said yes on such short notice. I sat with Matt and chatted with him, calmed him down before his wedding.
We had a lot in common and kept in touch. Bob is our single friend. Well, I guess I’m single now too. The married guys would hang with Bob just to live vicariously through his singleness.
We’d mainly get together and play D&D. Bob is the DM. We went out to dinner at a pretty nice steakhouse. It was a nice change from protein shakes, but it was still hard to eat.
“Eat your steak, you wuss,” they said, and we all laughed. I got it down like a big boy. After dinner, I told most of them the saga, minus some details. I don’t want exactly what I know to get back to Emily.
Even though these guys are trustworthy, they were very supportive. They couldn’t believe Emily did that to me. They were pretty upset with her. Matt mentioned he heard Emily is really struggling.
I stopped him right there and told him I didn’t want to talk about or hear about Emily beyond what we already discussed. Afterwards, we went to this country dive bar Bob had heard about. The kind of place where the floors are one large glue trap for human beings. My shoes stuck enough that I had to retie them with double knots.
They drank beer and bourbon shots while I stayed sober. I didn’t need the alcohol fairy advising me to call Emily and cry, then eat a bullet. My dad had told me a couple of days beforehand to stay away from alcohol. I was way ahead of him.
He also said real men drink bitters and soda when they’re not drinking booze at a bar, not diet soda or mocktails. So I asked the bartender for a bitters and soda, confident I’d be looked at like a manly man. She teased me and said, “Okay, Grandpa,” and poured me club soda with a few drops from what looked like a brown Tabasco bottle. Thanks, Dad.
I like the taste, though. I soon became stuck in that sober guy limbo where everything is funny, but I know that in an hour I’m going to be babysitting adult toddlers. The guys got more and more hammered and more and more enraged about what Emily did to me. They wanted to call her up and yell at her.
I told them I took care of it and that absolute silence and no contact is the right way to treat a cheater. They seemed to agree. Jim was calling the female bartender “bro. ” Matt was downing draft beer and stuffing steak nachos down his throat after a steak dinner.
He and his wife are pescatarian, so I aided and abetted dietary infidelity just like Bev did with actual adultery. Matt paid for that sudden intake of red meat later. We had lively conversations about politics and their relationships, but not mine. I don’t know if there were any pretty girls there.
I wasn’t really looking. I felt like a burn victim, like everyone was staring at me and doing that thing where you inhale sharply between clenched teeth. After the bar kicked us out at the end of the night, I herded them into Jim’s minivan. I kept Bob from purchasing a homeless man’s dog.
Jim didn’t need that smell in his minivan, and Jim’s wife would harpoon me. Matt was moaning and holding his stomach. I stole a trash bag from the little closet in the bar’s restroom just in case he needed to throw up. I drove them all home and let them get their own cars the next day.
I walked Bob to his bed, then thought better of it and decided to cut out the middleman. I deposited him in front of his toilet, head hanging over the side. I gave Matt over to his pregnant wife and told her that for a change, it would be Matt doing the vomiting. She tried to talk with me about Emily, but I politely shut it down quickly.
I don’t know why her friends are so invested in us getting back together. I can only assume they don’t know the whole story. I drove Jim’s minivan back to his house. I shoveled Jim into his master bath, where he proceeded to sacrifice his expensive steak dinner to the porcelain gods.
It’s okay. I didn’t pay for it. Jim’s wife gave me a big hug and asked how I was holding up. I said as good as can be expected.
She said I should concentrate on whatever new beginning I choose next. I guess I just won at soon-to-be-ex-husband bingo, because that’s one of the top three things everyone’s been saying to me lately. I paid for a ride back to the bar to make sure all their cars were locked down, then I drove mine to the hotel where I’m currently staying. Sunday night we played D&D and Code Names at Bob’s place.
None of us drank. I had a good time then, too. I’m going back to work on Monday. By that, I mean I’ll be bringing my laptops to the public library or a coffee shop to get my work done.
I don’t have any in-person meetings scheduled next week. I think I’m just going to lay low and establish a new normal. Next week, or maybe the week after, I’ll be moving over to my dad’s friend’s Airbnb remodel and helping out there in my spare time. That will be my home for the foreseeable future.
Right now we’re waiting on the credit card records, and to my knowledge, Emily hasn’t gotten a lawyer yet. Come on, default judgment. My lawyer told me John’s wife contacted her. She didn’t get more specific than that.
Nothing from Bev or her husband. They’re Emily’s friends, not mine. I did her husband a favor, though. What happens next is up to him.
The only overnights Emily had during the affair were when she visited her parents three times. I verified it with them each time, not because I was paranoid, but because I liked talking to my mother-in-law and it was an excuse to chat. The third time, Emily came down with the flu and her mom took care of her for a couple of days. I’m pretty convinced she didn’t do overnights with John.
The closest she came was New Year’s Eve. I suppose my mother-in-law could have aided and abetted the infidelity, but she’s very religious and I don’t believe she would. Not going to lie, it would hurt a lot if she did. As far as news of Emily, I have no idea since I’m no contact.
Matt said his wife said Emily is struggling, and that’s it. I hope she gets help if it gets too bad. I checked the cameras and Emily seems to have moved out of the house. I believe she’s with her parents currently, which is a hell of a commute for her, so she’s probably taking time off work.
I’ll update if anything significant happens. Believe me.
