After Brady let me have Tucker for a week, we started talking a little more regularly. He seemed to need to bitch about his mom because she was being a little more ridiculous than normal. Hunter and Dom are having issues – she’s done a complete lifestyle change (Brady couldn’t explain it when I asked him to elaborate) and Hunter is so against it that he reached out to their mother for advice. Imagine how desperate you’d have to be to need her help. And their mom took it upon herself to constantly lecture Brady about Hunter’s relationship mistakes. He says it’s awful.

“What did she say about me?” I asked, because I know the woman had a mouthful to say about my and my influence on Brady’s life.

Brady didn’t make eye contact. “Nothing. We didn’t talk about you.”

And we all know Brady is a bad liar, but I couldn’t even bring myself to care because their opinions don’t count to me anymore.

One Friday night though, we met up to get pizza and beer after work. After we finished our pie plus three pitchers of beer, Brady said some of his friends were at a bar nearby and invited me to tag along. And usually I was spending my weekends with Kendra and the baby, getting drunk on wine and then falling asleep on their couch so I agreed to go.

Brady introduced me to a couple of people then we grabbed a spot at the bar and ignored everyone else. It kind of felt like old times when Brady and I would spend all of our time at the bar getting drunk and loving on each other – like very early on in our relationship.

While we were talking I realized that I hadn’t seen my phone in a while and as a girl who is addicted to her phone, I freaked out and dug into my bag to get it. I literally gasped when I saw that I had a new message from Zach. It was hard, but I hadn’t spoken to him at all in about a month and he stopped texting me and calling me since I hadn’t been responding.

“Everything okay?” Brady asked with an amused look on his face.

I nodded and rolled my eyes. I hoped he couldn’t tell I was breaking out in a sweat.

I opened the message and saw that Zach had messaged me, “Hey, you out tonight?”

I felt this wild, frantic sensation like I needed to respond to him right away. I hadn’t heard from him in a month and I’d stopped thinking about him as much, but even with Brady standing right in front of me, I couldn’t move my fingers fast enough to respond to him.

“At a bar in Lincoln Park. Where are you?” I said back.

“I could meet up with you shortly if you want,” he said.

I smiled. The opportunity couldn’t have come quicker in the conversation.

“After you ditch Kelsey and the cat?” I said back.

Zach read the message and then tried responding a few times before I locked my phone and put it back in my purse.

Brady and I had a couple more drinks at the bar then told his friends we were leaving. We walked out and went across the street to another bar where we only stayed for one drink.

“So what do you want to do after this?” Brady asked.

I shrugged. “We should get food. I really want a grilled cheese.”

We finished our drinks and walked to Brady’s house while he ordered grilled cheese on UberEATS. Tucker was ecstatic to see me and even more excited that his parents were together. I kicked off my shoes and plopped on the couch and waited for my food to arrive. I noticed that Brady’s place looked immaculate – so much cleaner than when I lived there. He probably hated having me and all my stuff as a roommate.

I pulled out my phone again and saw that Zach had finally replied.

“I just left dinner. Are you still at the bar?” he said.

“I know you have no plans of leaving your wife anytime soon and I’m not interested in being your side piece. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for dragging me all across the country to your family’s properties where I’m sure you’ve spent a ton of time with Kelsey too. You’re a loser.”

I laughed at myself for calling him a loser.

“The food will be here in three minutes,” Brady announced. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“A vodka tonic,” I called out.

Zach replied, “What? Let’s meet and talk. I think you have the wrong impression of me.”

Brady returned with my drink and then went outside to wait for the food. I reread my messages with Zach and I started bawling. I felt betrayed and hurt, but mostly annoyed with myself for not only getting into the situation but letting it hurt me like that.

When Brady returned, I was crying into Tucker’s fur.

“Uh, are you okay?” he asked.

I didn’t answer him and just grabbed the food from his hands. I think Brady was a little weirded out and didn’t know what to say so he just sat down next to me.

“I miss you,” I blurted out. “I’m sorry for being such a huge bitch all the time. I don’t know how to be a good girlfriend.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Brady said.

We ate our food in silence (aside from the sounds of Tucker whining for us to share). When we were done, Brady took all our trash to the kitchen and when he returned, I stood up and threw my arms around him. He probably thought I was fucking crazy. But when I pulled away, Brady kissed me – with our cheesy garlicky breath and all.

“I miss you too,” he said.

“You shouldn’t,” I told him.

He smiled. Brady is honestly so adorable that it hurts. Like how could anyone ever be mean to him? Myself included. At that point I was comparing him to Zach and thinking out of all the things I thought he did, he never hurt me like Zach did and I just don’t think Brady is capable of that.

So we hooked up. Not my proudest moment, but I guess it’s what can be expected at 2 am after a long evening of drinking and my conversation with Zach.

I woke up the next morning in Brady’s white bed. My pillow was covered in mascara and eyeliner. Brady was still sleeping facing away from me. I laid there staring at the back of his perfect head until my creepiness seemed to wake him up. He stirred a bit and then turned and saw me watching him.

“Oh. Hey, Reese,” he said, smiling.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. I felt like I was invading his personal space and life by being there.

“For what?” Brady asked with his brow furrowed.

“For last night and for still being here. Thanks for the grilled cheese though,” I said.

“Thanks for hanging out with me,” he said.

I guess I was just dying to talk to someone about it, but I told him about Zach. I spared him the gorey details (the vacations, jewelry, pregnancy scare, etc) and he just looked at me for a minute.

“That’s tough,” he finally said. “I’m sure you didn’t go into it wanting to hurt someone or get hurt yourself.”

“Obviously, but I did.”

“Well don’t beat yourself up about it. It sounds like you realized your mistake and got yourself out of it. That’s about the most you can do at this point.”

I think the thing I miss most about Brady is how sweet and positive he is. I mean, he has his days like the rest of us, but overall he’s such a nice guy. But I don’t think he appreciated my story because he got up and asked if I wanted a ride home. Basically kicking me out. And I happily accepted the ride.

Later on in the day, I was out drinking margaritas with Preston and decided to text Brady for a follow up. Not to be like thirsty or anything, just so he’d know things weren’t weird.

I did something else bad. I made out with Scott. In his office. We were the only two to stay late one evening and it was one of those things that I knew was completely wrong when I was doing it, but I didn’t stop. I told myself it was fun enough and that I’d deal with the consequences later. Things have been back to normal since (me ignoring him, him sending passive aggressive emails), but I think we just needed to get it out of our system.

I don’t really have anything else to share. Brady is traveling overseas for two weeks so I’m keeping Tucker and I’ve been staying home with him so I haven’t had much of a social life. But y’all remember Christian from Houston? He will be in Chicago over the weekend and we’re hanging out. It’ll be nice to see someone drama free. I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. Thank y’all so much for the sweet emails, tweets and comments! I’ll try to come back to blogging regularly again, but it’ll take some time to get back into it. Love you!!!!