After I met Caroline that one Saturday morning, she was everywhere. We broke the seal and now she was able to come out of hiding.

It started on Sunday, when Brady posted a photo of them together on Instagram. On his actual feed. And she was tagged. Hard launch! Brady hasn’t posted anything in like four years so this was quite surprising to me. And he’s not very Instagram savvy so he doesn’t realize that posting pictures of his new girlfriend while still having pictures of his ex-girlfriend (me) posted is tacky. Is this a straight man thing? Because Brendan still (still!) has all the pictures of his ex-wife posted. Even after I confronted him about it! Just delete them already. Or if you want to keep the memories, archive them. God. I don’t get it.

Anyway, in the picture, they’re sitting outside at a restaurant overlooking a body of water and his arm is around her. It was probably taken in Boston, I guessed. Brady was wearing sunglasses and a smirk — the knowing kind of smirk he does, like he knew I’d see the picture and start snooping. I wanted to slap him! Caroline was also in sunglasses and her hair was draped perfectly over her shoulders like a news anchor.

Her page is private which is perplexing to me because who has a private Instagram in 2023? What are you hiding? Her profile was like: 

A portrait standing fully clothed on a beach

Caroline 🐱

Cheesy manifestation quote 💫

Ooo, mysterious! And basic!

Brady texted me later that night —  way later, it was almost midnight. I was awake in bed, sending TikToks to Kristina and obviously I thought the worst. Why else would Brady be texting me at such an hour?

He said, “So what percentage of school did you plan on paying?”

I assumed Brady was going to pay for all of it. Or most of it at least – because that’s what he told me a while ago. What? He’s the one with the money — I wouldn’t want to go bankrupt trying to send my kid to school! And I pay for all of her clothes and toys and beauty products and her dance classes so why wouldn’t he?

“What percent do you think is fair?” I texted back.

“Since the school is your choice, I think at least 75% 😊” Brady said.

It was the emoji for me. When has Brady ever used an emoji?

“Hilarious! Have they approached you about joining SNL yet?” I said back.

“Not yet, but I bet if they did I could afford that school.”

So funny. I sent an eye rolling emoji back.

Then he said, “Seriously, did you plan on helping pay for the school?”

Ugh.

“I guess, but I’d like to remind you that you agreed to pay and I didn’t bank on you going back on your word, Brady,” I said.

“That was before you chose the most expensive school you could find, Reese,” he said and then added another smiling emoji.

“I wasn’t given a budget,” I pointed out, which is true.

Brady ignored my valid point and said, “50/50 seems fair to me.”

Ughhh.

“Considering I’m going to be the one who has to get her to and from school everyday, I handle her dance classes and all of her doctor’s appointments, and buy all of her clothes and toys, I disagree. But we can discuss it further next week,” I said.

Brady said, “I assumed you’d use the money I send to you every month for that. Plus I’m covering health insurance and your cell phone bill.”

I wasn’t trying to get into the nitty gritty details so I was like, “I said we can discuss it next week!”

Brady said, “Okay.” And then, “Are you in bed?”

I replied, “I am, are you?”

“Alone?” he said.

I looked around my dark bedroom, just to make sure. Where was this going? “Yeah, why?” 

“Me too,” Brady said. And then in a separate text added, “Talk to you next week.”

Uh…okay? What a strange line of questioning.

On Tuesday morning when Brady dropped Winnie off at my apartment, I thought maybe we’d talk about it some more. I was gonna be like, “And why does it matter if I’m in bed alone?”

Except he was being super short and barely even said hello. Not this again. He’s so hot and cold with me. As I was getting Winnie out of her booster seat, I saw that Brady’s phone was mounted on the dashboard and he was on an actual live phone call with Caroline 🐱. I guess he had it muted or something, but no wonder he didn’t want to chat.

Oh well, that had nothing to do with me. I pretended I didn’t notice we potentially had an extra set of ears listening.

“Do you want to continue our conversation from the weekend?” I asked.

“Not now, I’m in a hurry,” he said dismissively.

“Okay. I’ll text you later then.”

“Bye Daddy, I love you!”  Winnie squealed and then we sent him on his way.

Brendan came over later that evening. We hadn’t hung out in like two weeks and he was all tan from spending so much time in Florida. Winnie was excited to be reunited with her bestie and had a ton to fill him in on (mainly her new set of dolls since she dismembered and graffitied her old ones — she’s in her destructive era). As soon as he sat down on the couch, she immediately started climbing him like a piece of playground equipment like she always does.

“Oh my gosh, so tell us about what you did in Florida,” I said. What I really meant was, “Did you run into Reagan while you were there?”

Meanwhile, I got a text from Brady. It said, “Are you ready to be reasonable?”

Excuse me?

“Do you think I’m being unreasonable? You’re the one who said you’d pay for Winnie’s school!”

Brady said, “I may have, but I’m not paying that much. So if you really want her to go there then you’re going to have to get over that.”

Uh, okay. What an asshole. Next to me, I could hear Winnie getting more rowdy and I told her to calm down.

“Yeah, be careful or you’re gonna hurt yourself,” Brendan said.

If this child ended up in the ER, I was going to kill her.

Brady texted me again when I hadn’t responded with another smiling emoji.

😊

“Obviously I’ll help pay for school, but you’re being really annoying. You should’ve never said that if you weren’t going to follow through,” I replied.

“Me? You’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met. 😊” he said.

These fucking emojis!!! I was typing back a scathing response because why the fuck was he even bothering me? I said I would text him! And I had company over that I needed to focus my attention on. Speaking of which—

Brendan let out a loud, weird yelp and I looked over to find him doubled over on his side like he was in pain. Winnie was still sitting on top of him and she looked delighted with herself.

“What’s going on?” I asked, completely oblivious since I wasn’t paying attention.

Brendan was literally like, groaning in agony, but managed to let me know that Winnie had punched him in his crotch area. Punched?! And she was still sitting on him proudly like she just climbed a mountain. It was totally not funny, but it was kind of funny.

“Winnie!” I exclaimed.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said with a big grin which was not at all convincing.

“You should still apologize,” I said. “And maybe you should give Brendan some space. Like, do you need ice or something?”

Brendan tried to laugh and shook his head no. What? I don’t know! 

I went to pick Winnie up off him and she screamed “I didn’t mean to!” before bursting into a fit of tears. Seriously?

“This is not how someone who ‘didn’t mean to’ reacts,” I said which sent her over the edge. Drama queen! It was already close to time for her to go to bed anyway so I let her cry it out until she fell asleep.

So I felt bad about all of that. Brendan assured me that it was fine and he knew it was an accident. I was thinking, “Was it? How can we be so sure?” I mean, the tantrum was the act of a guilty child, but how would she even know doing that would elicit such an extreme response? It’s not like she’s ever done it to me.

I chalked it up to them just playing rough until I texted Brady back later. He’d texted me a few times after calling me “the most annoying person he’s ever met [smiley]” The nerve. He said:

“Maybe not the most annoying, but you’re pretty far up there.”

“But you do it on purpose though, don’t you?”

“So how much of school were you planning on covering? 50/50?”

“Sorry, Winnie punched Brendan in the balls so I had to deal with that,” I texted back.

Brady said something like, “Yeah, she’s been doing that.”

So I was, in fact, raising a little demon. I knew I wasn’t going crazy. Naturally I blamed Brady because this was his fault. She’s been going around punching people in their dicks and he didn’t think to warn me? And was he even disciplining her effectively if she’s “been doing that”? Why was she still doing it?

“You’re on your phone so much,” Brendan said later in bed.

“Sorry, just googling to make sure you’re still going to be able to produce children!” I said and then put my phone away for the night.

On Saturday, Brady offered to pick Winnie up in the city instead of me having to drive to Connecticut. I wasn’t going to argue with that because it was easier for me. Brady texted me to let me know that he’d arrived so Winnie and I headed downstairs. He was sitting there waiting in the car with Caroline. I was like, “Oh, so this is what we’re doing.” He was just going to parade his new girlfriend around everywhere any chance he got — after he’d been texting me literally all week!

“Hi Reese!” Caroline greeted me before Brady even said anything.

“Hi,” I said back.

She spun all the way around in her seat so she could watch me putting Winnie in her booster seat. “Do you have fun plans this weekend?”

“I do, do you?” I said back.

“Yah, it’s my cousin’s baby’s birthday party,” she said.

Brady was looking at me in the rearview mirror like he was trying to see how I was going to react.

“Aww!” I said.

“And I know Winnie likes swimming so she’s going to love the pool!” Caroline said.

“That’s literally so fun.” As you can see, I was really trying.

She said, “I know! It’ll be a good time. We can try to send pictures if you want.”

Wait, did I like Caroline? She seemed so sweet. Where did Brady find such a nice girl and what did he want with her? He’s such an asshole. I was like, you poor thing, he’s going to ruin your life. As my mother would say, bless her heart!