I guess I wasn’t exactly surprised when Henderson followed me on Instagram the very next morning. If I actually cared, I would’ve done the same thing! Reagan herself seemed harmless and Brendan didn’t seem interested in any sort of relationship with her so she didn’t matter anymore! Plus, I have that Finsta, remember?

Anyway. Brady was being a huge ass to me on and off. He was super hot and cold. One day I’d drop off Winnie and he would be super dismissive and blatantly say he didn’t want to talk to me and then the next day he’d send selfies of him and Winnie. And occasionally, he’d be really sweet and say stuff like, “You look pretty.”

And it’s like, I have a hot boyfriend who has a rich, skinny ex and a gym instructor who is in love with him so yeah, maybe I did try a little harder this morning. I used to think Brady was so attractive, and I guess he still is, but after reflecting on everything we’ve been through, his personality kind of ruined it for me. Remember when he had dinner with Sydney at her apartment during lockdown and then got mad at me for not being okay with it? What a little fucker.

One day I was killing time after dropping Winnie off while waiting for Lola to text me back. Brady followed me into the kitchen and started chatting me up like he hadn’t asked me to leave him alone while he worked earlier. I kind of ignored him and gave short responses and then finally, Brady was like, “So are we just done then? Is that what you want?”

“Huh?” I spun around. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about us. Our relationship,” Brady said and gestured between me and him like it was obvious.

I stared at him for several moments waiting for him to elaborate or clarify or say he was joking, but he didn’t. Was he crazy or had I just imagined the past two years?

“Uh…I think that ship has sailed,” I said.

“Okay,” Brady said with no emotion.

“Wait, right? I’m confused about what you’re asking.”

He said, “I don’t know, do you want to try to make our relationship work and talk about stuff or do you want to just move on?”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked because when has Brady ever initiated a serious conversation?

“Yes,” he said back with a straight face.

Huh??? I had been very much up my own ass lately so for a moment I thought I’d missed something. But no, this was typical Brady — making me second guess myself and question my own sanity.

“If you wanted to talk, why didn’t you months ago?!” I demanded, ready to strangle him.

Brady shrugged, like this was so silly. “You don’t make it very easy to talk to you sometimes.”

I rightfully blew the fuck up then. “When have you ever even tried to talk to me? You ignored me for like a year straight and refused to even have a conversation with me. Like, are you joking? How would you even know I’m hard to talk to when you’ve never even attempted?”

He was like, “See, this is exactly what I mean.”

“What are you on?” I asked seriously. Because obviously there had to be drugs involved for him to be talking like this. At this point, I’d had a new boyfriend for an entire year and now he was asking about working our shit out?

“What? I’m not on anything,” Brady said, clearly offended.

“Crack. It must be crack,” I continued on.

“Ugh, whatever,” he scoffed and then walked off.

Whatever indeed! The nerve! I was seething for the first 24 hours because it’s just like Brady to do this. We had an accidental makeout, he was a complete and utter asshole to me and now he wanted to work on things? Where was this even coming from? Wasn’t he banging Anna? And what, did he think I was just dating Brendan until he was ready to have a serious talk about our relationship? But then once I sat and thought about it, I started to feel guilty. Because had I *actually* given him/us the opportunity to work on things or had I immediately taken the opportunity to get with Brendan? Which, obviously I don’t regret at all, but was that fair to Winnie? I should’ve done everything in my power to keep our family together, right? And for once in his life, Brady actually wanted to talk — was I wrong for not even giving him the chance? Winnie deserved to have her parents together, you know? It didn’t help that Brendan was busy that weekend so I had nothing to do except sit around thinking about what Brady said.

But on Tuesday, Brady went right back to refusing to look at me or talk to me so I got over that.

For Brendan’s birthday, he and his family had a ski trip planned. They fucking would. When Brendan invited me, I let him know that I would absolutely not be skiing so if that was expected of me then I’d have to pass. He said that he just wanted to spend time with me and he didn’t care if I skied or not. I wasn’t trying to be a brat, but all of these people have their own special ski equipment so there was so way I was going to make a fool of myself in front of them. So I agreed to go and spent $1,900 on my own non-ski gear.

The entire trip was low key, but chic and it turns out that Margot isn’t a big skier either — at least she wasn’t that weekend, she said. So we spent a ton of time at the resort together. I was waiting for her to confront me about moving too fast with Brendan or perhaps the New Year’s Eve party — a couple days after the party, Brendan let me know that our showing up to the party “didn’t go down well,” with their families (*put in Nene Leakes’ “Whatever that means” .gif*) but then didn’t want to get into the specifics. Obviously it was because he brought me, but no one wanted to say that.

Danielle was there and didn’t speak to me all weekend except what felt like a snide comment/observation about how isn’t it hard to find so much time away from Winnie? Excuse me?

“Well, she does have another parent, you know,” Brendan said.

“Yeah I know, but still,” Danielle said.

It’s like, who asked you? Mind your own (nonexistent) business. She’s the kind of person who has zero personality aside from being a passive aggressive asshole and those are my least favorite kinds of people. I take back everything nice I’ve ever said about her.

Anyway. I’m sorry for being gone so long. So much is going on. I can’t remember if I posted here, but I bullied Mike into a title change and raise a little while ago. My argument was that I’ve been doing way more than my original job description called for (even outside of covering for Paige) so Mike threw a “senior” at the beginning of my title and gave me a small raise to appease me. But then of course, Mike took that and ran with it and wanted to see a return on his investment, I guess. He put me in charge of a ton of shit, mostly things I have no idea how to do so I’ve had to give myself a crash course in engineering basically. Mike was too busy to teach me anything and obviously Paige was no help. It was really hard and miserable at first and I really thought I was going to quit, but eventually I got the hang of it.

While I was busy taking on more at work, Brendan expressed wanting to take a step back from his company to “focus on other stuff.” I would always tell him that perhaps he’s a bit too hands on (I can’t even count the number of times I’ve caught him literally drilling and sawing at a job site), but he said he hates sitting at his desk in front of the computer. We talked through it a few times and he just kept saying he’s not passionate about the company or anything he’s doing and he’s sick of it. Plus, he wanted to consult for some of the small businesses he’s invested in, like he’s Mr. Wonderful or something. I pointed out that it sounded suspiciously like an early midlife crisis and he agreed.

So I didn’t think he was that serious and was just venting until one day at happy hour, Miguel let it slip that they’d hired someone to take over their business operations, stuff Brendan usually takes care of.

“Oh yeah, I’ll bring her in to meet you this week,” Brendan said.

“Her?” I clarified, suspicious.

“Yeah. Gigi,” Miguel said and did this thing with his eyebrows that made me think she’s hot. “You’ll like her.”

Huh. We’d fucking see about that, wouldn’t we?

In the middle of all that, I moved to a new apartment. I had no plans of leaving our girly pink high-rise, but a place opened up in a building a few blocks away and it has a better layout, more storage and a kitchen to die for. I requested a tour one afternoon, just to see, fell in love and signed a lease later that day. Sure, it’s almost $2,000 a month more than I was paying before, but Winnie and I are happier and I have zero regrets.

I obviously have so much more to say, but I wanted to give y’all a quick update so you know I’m alive. be back soon!