Chapter 23:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

She called me on a rainy Tuesday. Said she had nowhere to go. Said I was the only one who’d ever truly understood her.

I grabbed my coat and ran out the door. Told Vivian I had a work meeting. She just smiled and told me to drive safe.

That’s who she was—trusting to a fault. A good wife. And I repaid that goodness by spending a month in a hotel room with another woman.

Meredith was… intoxicating. Vulnerable and fierce at the same time. She had these wounds—literal wounds, cuts on her wrist that kept reopening—and she made me feel needed in a way Vivian never did. With Vivian, everything was easy. Smooth. With Meredith, everything was a crisis, and I got to be the hero.

I didn’t realize until much later that some people create crises specifically so they can be rescued from them.

When I came home, Vivian told me she was pregnant.

The news hit me like a physical blow. I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t prepared. I had one woman at home growing my child and another in a hotel room who needed me to survive, and somehow I had to manage both.

Vivian’s pregnancy made everything worse. She was sick all the time, exhausted and pale, and I found myself resenting her for it. She wasn’t the fun, cheerful girl I’d married anymore. She smelled like cooking grease and wore sweatpants and her skin had gone sallow.

Meredith, by contrast, was always put together. Always appreciative. Always grateful for my attention.

𝙁𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙥𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙩: 𝙜ⱥ𝗅𝗇𝗈ν𝖊𝗅𝘀・𝙘𝙤𝙢

So when Vivian threw a tissue box at my head—when she dared to act hurt, to make a scene, to be anything other than endlessly accommodating—I packed up Meredith and left.

And my wife, my sweet, trusting wife, destroyed the apartment and filed for divorce.

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