My vaccinated boyfriend thought it would be a good idea to go to Florida with his cheater brother. Ew.

He proposed the idea one day while he was at work, via text message of course.

“Was thinking of going to Florida for a weekend at the end of the month. Would you mind?”

“Of course I would mind. Florida is a cesspool and you have no business getting involved in that,” I replied.

“Why? I don’t plan on coming into contact with anyone except Hunter and we’ve both been vaccinated.”

I was typing back something along the lines of, “I’m sure Hunter will be bringing enough germs to infect the whole state,” but then Brady said, “I already got a ticket. I assumed you wouldn’t care.”

Do you know what happens when you assume, Brady? He was already on my shit list because he let Winnie sleep in the bed with us one night and now she refuses to ever sleep in her own bed.

We got into a huge fight about it, after the baby screamed and cried because she wasn’t ready to sleep and wanted to continue playing on the iPad. It was already way past her bedtime. Brady gave in and I said, “You can’t just give her whatever she wants like that. She’s already spoiled and I don’t want her to turn into a brat too.”

“Oh yeah?” Brady said with a straight face. “And you don’t think she got it from you?”

I got up and walked out of the room because I didn’t want to curse him out in front of Winnie, but needless to say, I let him fucking have it over text message.

So now I was really mad at him.

Luckily though, work has been a good distraction. I’ve been going into the office 2-3 times a week, mostly just to get out of the house. Mike and Paige are almost always there and stay cooped up in his office, which I thought was odd. I can understand needing to work closely together, but it’s just weird. Half the time, they don’t even know I’m in the office because they never come out. One day I cornered Sam to see if she had more information.

“He has her on a performance improvement plan so I think he’s trying to work with her,” Sam explained.

A performance improvement plan?! Interesting!

“Do you think she’s going to get fired?” I asked.

“It’s hard to say. I’m not exactly privy to information like that,” she said back.

And it’s like, you should be. You have the most access to Mike, you should know everything. But whatever.

The weekend Brady went to Florida, Brendan was also on vacation too — to some chic private island. So Winnie and I headed over to Mel’s to have company while we kept tabs on them. The four of us sat perched in the sunroom facing the lake in their backyard with wine spritzers and I complained. I’d told Mel a little bit about Brendan, but when she saw me spiraling while watching his Instagram videos she figured there was more to the story.

So I explained everything, including the whole separation scandal. I showed her the videos of Brendan and his supermodel wife taking a private jet to the island and frolicking on the white, sandy beach.

Mel was quiet for a minute.

“What?” I wanted to know, sensing her judgement.

“You already know what I’m going to say,” she said.

“Yes, it’s kind of inappropriate. I know that.”

“You’re having an emotional affair.”

“Mel!” I gasped. “That’s a bit of a stretch.”

“You may not think so, but even his wife agrees. And you’ve deliberately not told Brady about him so you must know it’s true.”

Jeez. I don’t remember asking for such brutal honesty.

“What do you want to happen?” she went on. “You can deny it all you want, but you obviously have some feelings involved.”

“I don’t want anything to happen. He’s one of the closest friends I have here and I want to keep it that way,” I said.

We were silent for a moment while we sipped our drinks.

“I’m surprised, I guess,” she said. “You and Brady seem so good together.”

“We are.” I was defensive now. “I haven’t told him because there’s nothing to tell. I don’t want to make it a thing.”

“You know, this happened to us a few years ago. It was with him though, with one of his nurses. It was when he was working overnight and they spent a lot of time together. And then when he was home during the day, he’d be on the phone with her. She was a little bit older, divorced a zillion times and super sexy.”

It sounded almost exactly like Brady and Sydney.

“So what’d you do?” I asked.

“I got him to admit he had feelings for her and when he did, I told him he had to end things with her if he wanted a future with me.”

And then I got a flashback of breaking up with Brendan. I can’t believe Mel handled the situation so easily. If Brady admitted to having feelings for someone else, I’d definitely leave. But Mel is so smart, it’s no wonder she and her husband have such a strong marriage. I need to listen to her.

I wasn’t really worried about Brady while he was in Florida despite the fact that he hadn’t texted me since he landed and was hanging out with his morally corrupt brother.

But then on Saturday night, Hunter sent a picture in a group chat between the three of us. The picture was of Brady slumped on a couch, looking like he was passed out with a beer in his hand. But in the corner of the picture I could see a sliver of a girl dressed in a strappy crop top and jeans next to him. Excuse me?

“Where are you and who’s there?” I asked.

Hunter sent some crying emojis back. I wanted to fucking kill him. In a separate message, I said, “Tell me who is there right now or I’ll tell your wife about your secret kid in Chicago.”

“Calm down. We’re at the house and the maid is here,” he said back.

It took me a few seconds to realize that by “maid” he meant Daniela, the gorgeous housekeeper I’ve met a couple of times.

“And you don’t have to worry. I have that situation under control 😉,” Hunter added.

“You’re fucking disgusting.”

When Brady got home on Sunday night, I confronted him — mostly just to guilt trip him.

“You know, you’re a dad now. It’s super irresponsible to go to Florida and party with girls like that. You could overdo it and die of a drug overdose or something. Then what would we do?” I said.

Brady, who was bouncing the baby in his arms, stopped and looked at me like I was insane. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m just saying. Obviously your brother doesn’t care about his family and I don’t want him to be a bad influence on you. I don’t think it’s a good idea to do a trip like that again.”

“Okay,” Brady said. “I hadn’t seen my brother in a long time so I thought you’d understand.”

“Of course I understand! I just don’t see the need to need to hang out with other women and drink to excess like that. And whatever else you did,” I said.

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“And stop apologizing to me!” I exclaimed. “Just do better.”

A little while later, while we were getting ready for bed, Brady said, “We should watch what we say in front of Winnie now. She’s talking and might start repeating things. We don’t want her saying ‘drug overdose’ or anything like that.”

And it’s like, are you seriously trying to lecture me on parenting when you’ve created a little monster brat of a child?

“Okay then when you know you’re in trouble stop picking up the baby to protect you,” I said.

“Okay.”

We got in bed and I made Brady tell me the details of the trip: what they did, where they went, who they saw, etc. He was sure to be super vague about the housekeeper, but then I thought of something.

“Did you ever sleep with her?” I asked.

“Sleep with who?” he asked, to buy time.

“Daniela. I sensed some tension there when I met her. Did y’all have sex?”

“No! Jeez.” He looked away. “I mean, maybe when we were younger, but I don’t think so.”

Which means they absolutely did and I’m so sick of Brady having sex with every woman he knows. He and Hunter are really not that different.

I saw on Mike’s calendar that he had a meeting with Brendan in the office. So I got dressed in a midi sweater dress and heeled boots and dragged my ass to the city.

When I got there, the place was deserted, but I saw that Mike’s light was on through the frosted window on his door. Because I’m nosy, dropped off my things and then walked over to eavesdrop. I wanted to see if Brendan was in there with him for their meeting. Sure enough, after a few seconds I heard them in there laughing. I stayed to see what they were talking about because for some reason I always feel like they’re talking shit about me. I have no reason to feel that way, but I do.

They carried on talking for a minute or two and then Mike suddenly stopped.

“Hello?” he called out. “Is that Reese?”

They could see me through the frosted glass, I realized too late. Fuck.

I pushed the door open. Mike was sitting behind his desk and Brendan sat in a chair opposite. They were both staring at me.

“Oh, hi! Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb. I decided to stop by today so if you need anything, I’m in my office,” I said.

Mike continued staring at me like he was utterly unamused, but Brendan broke into the hugest grin like he was thrilled to see me. I felt myself beginning to blush.

“Great. I will speak to you after this meeting,” Mike said pointedly.

“K!” I glanced at Brendan one last time before closing the door again. I wanted to die of embarrassment at being caught eavesdropping.

I went and worked in my office alone for a little while. Paige is still sending bitchy, passive aggressive emails while not replying to mine, so I’ve been deliberately excluding her from things and not responding to her either. Sorry, I’m petty and she’s messing with the wrong one.

Later on, I heard a knock on my office door, and I assumed it was Mike coming to talk to/yell at me.

“Come in!” I said and Brendan stepped in. I swallowed hard. He was wearing a fitted black t-shirt, those Lululemon joggers and Yeezy sneakers with his gold bracelet and an Apple Watch. He put a hand on his chest and I realized I had been completely checking him out. He’s like, very hot. It gave me a headache. “Hey!”

“Hey,” he said back as he walked in completely and shut the door behind him. “I didn’t know you were coming in today.”

“Yeah, last minute decision. Didn’t know you’d be here either!” I lied.

“Cool coincidence.” Brendan sat in one of my spare chairs and looked around a little bit. “But I’m happy to see you. How have you been holding up? I thought life was finally going back to normal, but it doesn’t look like it.”

“Yeah, if I have to watch another minute of television I’ll probably blow my brains out. I can’t take it anymore.”

He laughed. “I feel you.”

Since things were going so smooth and normal, I decided to blow that up.

“You called me the other night. I assume it was a butt dial, or did you want something?”

“Oh, yeah.” His smile vanished and he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Sorry about that. I needed someone to talk to and I…sorry. I know it was late.”

So then I felt bad for not answering or checking to see if he needed anything. What would he need to talk about and why me, of all people?

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved like it was no big deal while avoiding eye contact. Obviously lying.

“Brendan.”

He looked back at me. “She…”

I already knew who he was referring to.

“I don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s okay,” he said.

And it’s not like I could force it out of him. So naturally, this made me even more curious about what was going on. His wife must be giving him a hard time again, I assumed, but it can’t be about me since we hardly talk anymore!

We continued catching up for a while. I complained to him about how Winnie likes Brady more than me and Brady’s mom who has been harassing me and my weekly wine binges with Mel. Brendan told me stories about their dog and showed me some pictures and videos that made me sad because I miss Tucker. He relaxed more and leaned back in his chair and from that angle I could really appreciate the way his body looked in his outfit. Which is obviously terrible, but I’m not sure how I could have avoided it. Homeboy has been working out.

At one point, we heard the main doors chime open and I assumed it was Paige or Sam coming in or Mike leaving.

Then I heard a girl’s voice squeal, “Hey, Mikey!”

For a split second, I thought it was one of his prostitutes or something, but Brendan’s face went blank and he froze.

“We’re having lunch. The three of us.”

And then it all made sense. It was Brendan’s wife.

“Oh.”

“Sorry. I’d better go. It was nice to be able to catch up,” he said.

“Totally.”

There was a knock on the door and then Mike swung it open without waiting for an answer. What if I was naked? Or what if me and Brendan were doing something we didn’t want him to see? Rude. He poked his head in and Brendan jumped up.

“Ready?” he asked Brendan. Beyond him, I could see the wife standing there, waiting. She was tiny and beautiful and dressed in a Balenciaga leather jacket that I know for a fact costs $5,000.

“Yes,” Brendan said and squeezed past him out the door.

Mike looked at me. “We’re going to lunch if you’d like to join.”

Wow, Mike was actually being polite and inviting me. As tempting as it was, the thought of sitting at a table with Mike, Brendan and his wife after everything that has gone down, was too much. Even for me. Plus, wasn’t Mike fully aware of their marital issues and how I was somehow involved? I glanced quickly at Brendan, whose back was facing me, as he said something to his wife.

“You know, I’d love to, but I’m swamped. I’d better stay here and work. Thanks though!” I said back.

He didn’t say anything and closed the door. But before the door shut all the way, Brendan’s wife looked me right in the eye. It wasn’t until I heard the door chime again that I realized my heart was racing and I had to force myself to calm down. And then once I was calm, I burst into tears.

What the actual fuck? I don’t even know why. I’m back on birth control so something must be going on with my hormones.

Anyway, Brady’s been working a lot so we haven’t spoken that much. Usually he leaves before me and Winnie wake up and then when he gets home, we need to eat, put the baby to sleep and then he has more work to do. At this point, I’m not going to beg him to hang out with me and the baby. If he wants to, he will. And surely he knows that this is how a lot of relationships end — by growing apart. So it’s up to him.

He worked one Saturday and I made plans for me and Winnie: sleep in and then do chores around the house, order groceries, nap, paint, etc. But at 11am, the doorbell rang. I assumed it was one of my various deliveries so imagine my surprise when Brady’s mom was standing there. Unannounced. Carrying lots of bags and food.

“I brought lunch and gifts!” she said happily once I let her in.

“Thank you. I didn’t know you were coming,” I said. I was trying to be polite but in all those hours she spent driving here, she didn’t think it would be nice to call? What if we weren’t even home?”

“I told Brady,” she explained. “Did he not tell you?”

Of course. It made sense; Brady and I hadn’t talked much and he doesn’t tell me anything anyway.

“No, but it’s fine. Thanks for coming. Winnie will be excited to see you.”

She only stayed for an hour, but did plenty of damage during that time, talking complete shit as always. At one point, she asked if we’d signed the baby up for any sort of activities or schooling. And it’s just like, she’s not even 2. So no. Plus, we’re still in a pandemic.

“Well, I’ll speak to Brady about that,” she said haughtily.

After she left, I sent him a message.

“I would have appreciated it if you’d told me your mother was coming today. An unexpected visit was the last thing I wanted to deal with today.”

A few hours later, he texted back, “What? I didn’t know she was coming. She didn’t tell me.”

I assumed he was lying, like he always does when it comes to his mother, but then he added, “I wouldn’t have worked today if I knew she was coming.”

And that’s when I believed him. His crazy fucking mother. She knows Brady doesn’t tell me anything so it was easy for her to lie, knowing she could blame him. She’s so manipulative, I hate her! And she emailed me an article and long diatribe about how we are hindering Winnie’s growth. Bye. It went into the trash immediately.