Remember how I was bragging about Brady and how amazing he’s been lately? Literally a day later he made me mad and ruined everything.

He texted me saying, “I’m having dinner out so I’ll be home late. Eat without me.”

“For what reason?” I said back. Obviously I have no issues with him getting dinner with a friend or whoever, but it seemed a bit weird to me that he was purposely vague and didn’t really seem apologetic about missing dinner. He knows I kill myself every evening in the kitchen to have dinner ready for us.

He didn’t text me back of course and I spent the evening on FaceTime with Kendra. It started getting late and I hadn’t heard from him so I texted Brady again.

“Did you die? What’s going on?”

“Home in twenty minutes,” he said back.

And when he walked in twenty minutes later with his tie off I got even more mad.

“Who was so important that you needed to have dinner with them during a pandemic?” I asked.

“Uh.” He looked everywhere but at me. “Sydney stopped by the hospital for something and we decided to catch up after work.”

Fucking Sydney. Before I could go off, Brady grabbed Winnie from my arms and made a big show of spinning her around and goo-goo gah-gahing. I followed them into the kitchen.

“Sydney, huh?” I said. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Brady looked at me, offended.

“I can’t figure out why else you’d think it’s at all appropriate to have dinner with her in public when you have an infant at home.”

“I haven’t seen Sydney in months, Reese, and she’s my friend. There isn’t anything inappropriate about it.”

“And you know I hate her so I’m perplexed as to why you would think this was a good idea.”

“You have no reason to hate her.”

A thought popped in my head. “Mmhm. And where did you have dinner?”

Brady looked at me, suddenly silent and still. “Her apartment.”

I almost screamed. “You’re kidding me?”

He didn’t say anything, just stood there looking frightened so I continued.

“You schlepped your ass all the way to Brooklyn to have dinner with her at her house? It’s like you want me to get mad at you.”

“No, I’d like to be able to hang out with my friend without you reacting like a child.”

He is such an asshole. I didn’t have anything to say back immediately so he rushed off to change and I conspired to get rid of him. We didn’t talk much for the rest of the evening; he tried to tell me stories about work, but I ignored him and left rooms when he entered. I’m working on being a grown up and in general being less petty, but fucking Sydney. She’s a trigger for me.

By the following day, I’d forgotten about it and had a big dinner waiting for Brady when he got home. We even had sex that night.

But then.

We have this community center for our subdivision with a gym and pool and gathering areas, and Brady has been going to the gym there sometimes. Which is totally fine, but one day he wanted to take the baby to the pool with him. Obviously I was like ew, no. My baby has no business at a nasty pool — pandemic or not. This caused an argument, of course, because Brady’s favorite line is, “She’s my baby too.”

“Fine, you can take her but if she so much as catches a cold, we will never speak to you again.”

They left and I spent the alone time tidying up the house and ordering bullshit online. A few hours went by and I hadn’t heard from Brady. He said they’d be gone two hours tops and they’d been gone for almost three hours.

So I texted him, demanding to know what the fuck was going on. He didn’t reply for a while so I sent a few more messages. And then I called. When I still didn’t get an answer, I started to get a little panicky. What if something bad happened? You just never fucking know.

Since he wasn’t replying, I got myself dressed and made my way down to the pool. I’d worked myself into a frenzy at this point, convinced that I was going to see hundreds of ambulance, firetrucks and police cars outside the pool area.

But I didn’t. What I did find was a small pool area packed with gross people including Brady and Winnie. She was standing on his lap while he sat in a lounger. And sitting next to them was some woman, who was holding onto Winnie’s little hand with hers.

Oh fucking really?

I stormed over there.

“Hi!”

They all turned to look at me. The baby screamed.

“Hey!” Brady said. He turned to the lady he was with. “This is Allison.”

“Nice to meet you,” I lied. Obviously Brady already told her my name and if not, she had no business knowing it anyway.

I figured we’d all leave together since I’d clearly come to pick them up, but no one moved so I sat my ass right there next to Brady on the chair.

“You may as well have made this baby yourself. She looks exactly like you,” Allison said to Brady.

Here we go. People love to tell Brady how much the baby looks like him.

“She has my mouth,” I pointed out.

“No, I mean, identical. Every single feature. I’ve never seen a baby and parent look so much alike. It’s cute,” she went on.

“I was telling Allison how strong our family genes are. Even Hunter’s kids look just like him.”

“Yeah, except Winnie does look a little bit like me,” I said.

“No, she doesn’t,” Allison laughed.

This bitch. I gave her a look that told her I was done with her shit.

“Are you from Massachusetts too?” she asked me.

“No.” I turned to Brady. “Are y’all ready to go? She’s getting hungry.”

“Sure,” he said back.

We started packing up the toys, towels and drinks. From the corner of my eye, I saw Allison hand a towel to Brady, one she had been laying on, that apparently belongs to us. Ew. On top of everything else, he was letting strangers borrow our things. He put it in a bag and I made it a point to grab it with with fingernails and put it in a separate bag by itself.

Needless to say, Brady has not been allowed to take the baby to the pool since that incident. He’s not going to use my cute baby as a chick magnet. He really gets on my nerves with this shit. He knows how I am, but also, who would be okay with that? So many lines were crossed.

Anyway, that was a while ago. We are a lot better now. I’m back to loving the shit out of him again. He really takes care of us, but also he actually acts like he’s interested in me. Like, when he gets home from work he comes and finds me to give me a kiss and tell me how good I look and then suggests dinner options and activities to do for the evening. What a difference a little attention makes!

I’ll even forgive him for letting his mother call me “deceptive” and “unkind.” Lol, me! Can you imagine? I’m the least deceptive person ever — I’m very direct. And she said something like, “Well this was your decision, so you’ll have to live with it.” She’s such a bitch. I’ll have to tell y’all why she called me deceptive sometime.

I went into the office the other day. I was getting antsy at home and I’ve found someone reliable to watch Winnie occasionally so I figured why not. When I got there, Mike was the only person there. Well, him and Brendan. I had no idea Brendan would be there, I swear! And when I walked in to say hi to Mike in his office, they both looked shocked to see me and then looked at each other like they had just been talking about me.

Ugh. I love Brendan. Like, so much. He stopped by my office before he left and I demanded to know if he and Mike were talking shit about me.

And he looked at me like 🤨 and said, “Uh, no. Why would we?”

So I guess I was flattering myself as usual.

He then proceeded to sit and listen to me tell him stories about Winnie for two hours. I think his eyes started glazing over.

“Anyway, what’s new with you?” I asked.

He told me about how he and his wife got a puppy during quarantine. He hadn’t even admitted that they were back together by this point.

“And what did her dad have to say about this?” I asked sweetly.

“He’s happy. It’s not like we are having kids, at least not anytime soon, so this is good for now,” he replied.

Interesting.

“And they forgave you for whatever you did?”

Brendan gave me a weird look, staring me straight in the eye. Then he looked back down at his phone. “Yeah.”

I guess he’ll never tell me what really happened. But at least he’s happy, I suppose. And I talked him into redoing our bathroom so I’m very excited to get that project started!