He seems like a good man, but even good men have weaknesses.
Even good men cheat.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew says, “but I thought we were on the same page. I was pretty clear earlier.”
I frown. “About what?”
“The fact that I don’t date. I didn’t mean it to come out so harsh. I mean, I’m having a good time, and I like you, I just—”
“Ohh,” I say when I understand what he means. “No, it’s not that.”
“You sighed, then got quiet. I believe in woman-speak, that means you didn’t like my answer.”
“I was thinking about something else entirely.”
“What?”
I’m reluctant to go down this path with Andrew, but I’ve backed myself into a corner. I try to think of a polite way to put it. “It’s just that I don’t know if I believe you. About Denise. I would never, ever want to hurt another woman the way I was . . .”
“Did your ex cheat on you?” he asks.
I look down into the bubbles. Reggie’s infidelity is no secret, but there’s no room for it in this tub. It’s too heavy, too much, for a fling. For a vanilla bubble bath. For Andrew to take on when it isn’t his problem. I shake my head. I mean that I don’t want to talk about it, but if he misunderstands, I won’t correct him.
“You said you’re getting a divorce, but you didn’t say why. If that’s not the reason, what is?”
“Andrew, please. We’re having a nice time.”
“What kind of husband was he?”
I sigh, frustrated. Normally, I’ll take any chance to bash Reggie, but this feels less like a defense mechanism and more like opening up. I’m already naked at his mercy as it is. “The distracted kind.”
Finally, Andrew shuts up. I don’t know what I expected him to say, just that I expected him to say something. When I tell women about Reggie’s affair, they react different ways. Some apologize, as if we’ve done something wrong just by being women. Some launch into their personal experiences with cheating—that usually comes with anger. I’m the second type—I launch and rage.
Men, though, are different. They usually gloss over it when I bring it up, an anecdote they didn’t ask for.
“Let’s not talk about it,” I say. “It’s okay.”
“Distracted,” Andrew says after a few seconds, as if he’s still registering the word. “Meaning . . .?”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Maybe it is okay, maybe it’s not. When you say distracted,” he presses, “you mean by other women?”
I bend my knees, breaching the scalding water in an attempt to cool off a little. It doesn’t help. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, but everything so far tonight has been just right. I don’t want Reggie to ruin it. I don’t want Andrew’s reaction to ruin it by disappointing me. “He cheated on me,” I say. “With one woman that I know of. But it went on for almost a year.”
“A year?” Andrew raises his voice, startling me. “Are you kidding?”
“Kidding . . .?” I ask, unsure what he means. “It was an affair.”
He tightens his hold, tension cording his forearms. “An affair. For a year. Asshole.”
“Yes, he is.”
“Coward.”
I try to look back at him, confused, but I can’t see his expression. His reaction isn’t just unexpected; it’s intense. His body changes under mine, curling around me like a shield. Is he telling me what I want to hear? If so, why bother? “Reggie’s insecure, yes. It makes him weak, and it’s the source of his mistakes.” In business, in relationships, in life, Reggie always takes the shortcut, never puts all his cards on the table. He doesn’t give if he doesn’t think he can get. “How’d you know?”
“What other explanation is there?” Andrew asks. “He was scared. On some level, he knew he didn’t deserve you. Right?”
“I’m not sure if it runs as deep as that for him.”
“He hurt you before you could hurt him. It’s the only explanation,” he says again.
“It is?” I wrinkle my nose. In a way, it makes sense. Reggie doesn’t like to lose. He once secretly slandered a colleague who’d been up for the same promotion as him—and had never been caught. It is possible, whether he knew it or not, Reggie was threatened by the distance that’d been growing between us before he’d strayed. “Have you been cheated on?” I ask. “You seem to know a lot about it.”
“No, but what other reason is there? Clearly he didn’t find anyone better.”
I allow myself a small smile. “That’s sweet of you to say. Really.”
“It pisses me off,” he says, as if he didn’t hear me. “I don’t have personal experience with cheating, but people close to me do.”
Most likely, Andrew thinks because I’m Sadie’s boss, I don’t know her situation. Sadie continues to insist her husband never cheated on her, but I’ve heard that same thing from friends who later came crying back to me when they finally saw the truth. “You mean Sadie,” I say.
“You know about that?”
“Yes. Well, not the details, but I know a woman who’s been broken by a man when I see one, and that’s what Sadie was six months ago. She was a wreck. I don’t know how they got through his infidelity.” I shake my head. “How do you stay civil with him? Don’t you want to wring his neck?”
Andrew snorts. “You’ve got it all wrong, babe.”
“I don’t think so.” Is Nathan really such a good liar that he has Andrew convinced as well? When Sadie announced her pregnancy, I nearly keeled over. She seems happy, but can it last after how Nathan betrayed her? “Cheating often comes with a degree of brainwashing, although I don’t typically see it carry over to family members—”
“Wrong,” Andrew repeats. “It’s not my story to tell, but sometimes, things aren’t what they seem, Amelia.”
I let his words settle in. Up until now, I was confident I had Sadie’s situation nailed. That I knew all the details of all my friends’ relationships, whether or not they’d been divulged to me. Jennifer’s boyfriend went to Vegas for a weekend to attend a bachelor party? Cheater. Suzanne found an ink-smudged napkin in her husband’s briefcase? Adulterer. That’s just how it is. That’s life, especially in this city. The fact that I might be wrong makes me curious about the truth behind Nathan and Sadie.
“So that’s why you don’t date,” Andrew states. “Ex-husband was a cheater.”
It sounds like a limerick:
Amelia’s husband was a cheater,
A dirty, dirty pussy eater.
Between someone else’s legs he fell,
And several lies he did tell,
Then came home to his wife, and without telling her why, apologized with a bag from Chanel.
“When someone cheats on you, it—it puts all these ideas in your head, you know?”
“Like what?” he asks.
“We really don’t have to talk about this.”
“I want to. What ideas does it put in your head?”
I could ask why he cares or, if I really wanted, shut down the conversation. Andrew actually seems interested in what I have to say, though. When I talk about this with friends, it sometimes becomes a pissing contest. Who was hurt worst? Which of our ex-husband’s girlfriends is the youngest, prettiest, thinnest? How many times did we just miss catching them together? We’re making ourselves feel worse by pretending to help each other. I don’t know if they know it, but I do, and yet, I still participate.
Andrew’s concern might not be genuine, but it’s nice to talk to a man who doesn’t seem to blame me for Reggie’s affair. “Why wasn’t I enough?” I ask. “That’s the one my therapist, Dianne, likes to focus on, but what I can’t stop wondering is . . . if he was able to cheat on me for that long, what else did I miss? What am I still missing that’s right in front of me? He made me feel crazy for my suspicions, and now I . . .”
“And now?” he prompts.
“I don’t trust myself
anymore.” It’s the first time I admit it outside of Dianne’s office. “I don’t trust my judgment. That’s what he took away. My faith in others and in myself.”
Andrew rakes some hair back from my face. “I get it,” he says against my temple. “I think it’s a shame, but I get it.”
“Did you have a similar experience when your ex left?”
“Yeah.”
I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t.
“Is he with her now?” he asks.
My answering laugh is forced. “I don’t know. He came crawling back two weeks after I kicked him out, claiming he’d made a mistake. Slamming the door in his face was almost worth all the suffering.”
“And that was the last time you spoke to him?”
“Unfortunately not. He stops by sometimes. Says they’re not together, but I can’t believe a word he says about anything. Most of our interaction lately is through our lawyers.”
“He comes by here?”
“It’s his apartment, but I don’t let him in.”
“Hmm.”
“What?” I ask, sensing his hmm is more than just a hmm.
“Have you thought about moving out?”