The Other Other Woman (4 page)

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 texting 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.”

“I really wish you had,” he replied.

“See you in six hours…” I laughed nervously. Damn it. I knew I should have kissed him. It was possible that I might get another chance. He explained that he had planned on coming up to see a client in Burlington soon, and if he did, maybe I would be able to get away one night for dinner?
Of course not, you idiot!
I thought. I’m married! My husband would not be cool with me meeting some hot dude for an evening out on the town, and besides, that was just asking for trouble. What about lunch? Maybe we could meet for coffee? That seemed innocent enough, right? How can I even be considering this? We’re just friends so what’s the big deal? We just enjoy each other’s company. My husband had friends that were female. I’ve had friends that were men before. But to be fair, I didn’t tell any of my male friends that I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing them.

The conversation took a very interesting turn.

“We certainly seem to have an instant affinity for each other, don’t we?” he said.

“Indeed we do,” I admitted cautiously. I was very aware that we were heading down a dangerous path.

“I
really
want to see you, Mal.”

“I want to see you too, Matt… I do… but I’m just not sure how that would work. I don’t have the kind of marriage that I can just go out to dinner with some guy from work, you know? He would freak out, and rightfully so!”

“Could you just make up a meeting?”

“I don’t think so. It‘s just not something that typically comes up in my job.”

“Never?”

“No, not really. Plus, I am a terrible liar.”

“I’m sure we can think of something,” he pondered. “Lunch? Coffee? Drive-by? Hahaha.”

“We have to,” I agreed. “I really want to see you again. I don’t care if it’s for five minutes as you pass through town on the highway. I’ll meet you on the exit ramp if I have to,” I gushed. “It would be worth it.”

“Without a doubt, it would be so worth it.”

“I’m not letting you get away without a kiss this time, you know.”

“I wouldn’t even attempt it,” he laughed.

“But just a kiss! I can’t do anything else.”

“Just a kiss,” he agreed.

Suddenly, I could not wait to get to work in the mornings. I especially loved Mondays because I knew I would have five straight days of flirting with Matt. He would text me a good morning and then we’d usually talk four or five times over the course of the day. I loved to pick up the phone and lower my voice seductively and ask him, “So… what are you wearing?”