Since Brady wasted no time flaunting his new girlfriend in front of me, I was no longer going to try to hide my relationship to spare his feelings. Not that Brady has any feelings and not that I was hiding anything in the first place. I wasn’t inviting Brendan to pick ups and drop offs because that seemed unnecessary, but why shouldn’t I? I’d argue that he’s a bigger part of Winnie’s life than Caroline is. And I have millions of cute pictures with my boyfriend, perhaps it was time to plaster them all over my socials to show them off? Maybe I should send Brady and Brendan out for a coffee date to get to know each other since we’re all going to be a big happy family now?

I didn’t do any of that. Brendan’s schedule doesn’t even allow for him to accompany me to drop Winnie off because he’s always doing stuff on Saturday mornings. You know Brendan. He’s at a gym class or at cryotherapy or on a boat or doing a favor for his stupid sister. And anyway, if I started bringing him around all of sudden now, it would seem like I was doing it out of spite (and I would be). And as much as I wanted to show Brendan off to all of my nosy followers, I’m just…still not ready. And I’d never tag him — can you imagine? My friends would go to his wide open profile and find him posted up with a teeny tiny blonde (not me) aka “the love of his life.” Maybe once those pictures are gone, I’ll consider it.

Once the summer was in full swing, Brendan’s little early retirement began. He was like, “I’m just going to take a few weeks off,” put an out of office message up and then ghosted us. Well, them — at the office, not me. He’d call me on a Tuesday morning and be like, “My dad and I are flying to Maine for the day, talk to you laterrrr!”

I was thinking, “It must be nice to take an undetermined number of weeks off of work to do whatever you want!” But I was happy for Brendan and sad for myself.

Anyway, Miguel ended up hiring Gigi’s sister even after I advised him not to. She just graduated from college and hasn’t been able to find a job so to everyone it made perfect sense for her to just walk into Brendan’s company and start working. And obviously I was skeptical. Gigi had been inserting herself into everything and like I mentioned before, she’s kind of annoying so she was enough for me. Adding her sister to the mix was going to create chaos, I just knew it. Gigi invited herself to happy hour one Thursday afternoon and went on and on about her sister (Izzy) and how much we’d all like her. Which then got us on the topic of previous work experience and how they each chose which college to go to and their family life. She talks so fucking much. I know I talk a lot, but this was a bit much.

I’ll be like, “Miguel, how was your weekend?”

And Miguel will say, “It was good, I tried a new dinner spot in Brooklyn.”

And Gigi will interrupt and say, “Oh really – what’s it called? Because I was thinking of going to Brooklyn for dinner, but I didn’t end up wanting to go all the way over there so me and Izzy went down to the East Village and then we wanted to go to this rooftop, but the line was too long and my promoter friend…”

In my opinion, there’s never any point to anything she says. What? I know it sounds mean, but she always interrupts everyone to say absolutely nothing of importance. It’s like, I want to know about Miguel’s dinner date in Brooklyn, not your promoter friend!

Izzy was hired to work with Yesenia, the sweet young lady who handles all of the admin work for Brendan’s company. I adore Yesenia, mainly because she always tells me everything. Like this one time, she told me that Miguel had expensed $3,000 worth of shit for his little office and should she tell Brendan? I’m like, “That’s totally your call, but yes you should tell him.” But it’s mostly screenshots of the married men from their team flirting with her. And we both agree that it’s inappropriate, but she enjoys the attention and I’m entertained so we keep it a secret.

So anyway, I’ve always liked Gigi. She’s fucking annoying, but she’s sweet and she’s not malicious — she’s just insufferable. And when I met Izzy one day at their office, I immediately liked her too. Gigi and Izzy are both really thin and tall — but not supermodel tall, they’re both like 5’8. And they’re both pretty in an approachable kind of way. Like not overly hot, but you’d still do a double take. On the day I met her, Izzy was having a meltdown because she had a trip to Paris planned, but hadn’t received her passport in the mail yet.

“See, this is why I told you to get it months ago, you stupid bitch,” Gigi said to her.

Oh?

Miguel looked at me and shrugged like they do this all this time.

Later on, Izzy came up to me and said, “So how old are you?”

It was actually quite rude, but I’d give her a pass since she’s only 23. We started talking about her trip to Paris and I was giving her recommendations (don’t forget, I went to Paris once and now I’m an expert) and she kept saying she didn’t want to do the things I suggested because she’s far too anxious. All of her mannerisms are kind of skittish — like a cat or something — so I could see it. She did, however, talk about how she wanted to visit the Chanel flagship and how she had an appointment booked at Hermes. I’m like, okay she’s fun in a flighty kind of way. The same way I was at that age. She was barely employed, but about to spend $4,000 – $8,000 on a bag. Love that for her.

The best part is the fact that I’ve rarely seen Brendan annoyed by anything or anyone (he has the patience of a saint), but whenever Gigi and Izzy interact, he gets visibly agitated and retreats. I get it — they are so loud and their vocal fry is unbearable — but it’s very funny. Maybe that’s what finally sent him on his sabbatical!

And to say Yesenia was annoyed by them would be an understatement. At first I thought she was being nit-picky. Like, “Izzy walked into our meeting 7 minutes late with an iced coffee,” and “I’m going to kill her, she canceled our training to go on visits with Gigi and Miguel.” Or my favorite, “Izzy just told the entire office that she had sex with her ex last night and he came inside her so now Gigi is taking her to get a Plan B.” Nothing egregious I guess, but I could see why Yesenia was put off by her.

And then Gigi added me to a group chat between her and Izzy to ask a work related question, but then the group chat turned into them sending outfit pics, complaints about the Starbucks barista, and mindless observations about Miguel, like “I’m pretty sure he has a hickey on his neck lolz.” I was wondering, “How did I get in this?” But I was too polite to leave the chat, knowing they would be alerted.

Eventually Yesenia had to put her foot down because she actually did need Izzy’s help doing things around the office. I told her that she needed to be super direct with Izzy and give clear directions with a deadline. Trying to be nice and using the royal “we” was not going to work with this girl. Yesenia sent a screenshot of Izzy’s message back saying, “That’s impossible. Even if that’s all I worked on for the next 48 hours, I wouldn’t get it done. Not happening.” And then another from Gigi saying, “Izzy is working with Miguel and me on this really important project. She can help you with your thing starting next week.”

Do you know what I was going to do? Nothing! I was going to mind my own business! I’d tried to offer my best advice and it didn’t work so I was going to move on! None of this had anything to do with me and I wasn’t going to bother Brendan while he was away with these petty issues.

Carly texted me one afternoon to let me know that she and Chris, her husband, were coming to New York for a night to see a show. Carly is my good friend from Chicago who now lives in Philadelphia with Chris and their daughter.

“I think Chris said we’re grabbing dinner with Brady beforehand so please come! I’m dying to see you!” Carly said.

So Chris and Brady used to live together in Chicago and it’s how I met Brady in the first place. You can read about that here. Despite us all living just a few hours from each other, I haven’t seen Carly in over a year. We’re both really busy, but also something about her is depressing to me so I avoid keeping up with her.

I texted back, “Yeah, I’ll let you know about dinner,” knowing that if Brady was going to be there, I would absolutely not be there. Why would she even invite me? And why were they choosing Brady over me? Carly is well aware that we broke up and I would think she would ask me to dinner before asking him.

Needless to say, I didn’t get back to her about dinner because I wasn’t interested in going. I did, however, text Brady to talk to him about it.

“Yep,” he confirmed. “Excited to catch up with Chris.”

Whatever! I hoped they all had a terrible time!

Carly called me the day after they all had dinner while I was driving to drop my child off with her dad. I felt kind of bad about ghosting her, but not really.

“We missed you last night,” she said in a sing-songy way.

“Oh, did you?” I said back sarcastically.

“Totally, but Brady brought his girlfriend. Cara? I get why you didn’t want to come. I didn’t know he was dating someone,” Carly said.

Oh??? Now I was interested.

“Yeah, they’ve been together for a few moths. What did she say?”

“Nothing, she was really sweet. I can’t believe she’s 28.”

28?! It never even occurred to me to wonder how old Caroline is because I assumed she was around my age, but 28? Seems a little young for Brady who turns 36 this year (I can’t think about this for too long or I’ll spiral). No wonder she seems so optimistic, she’s still so young and unjaded!

So I made Carly tell me literally everything that happened including what everyone was wearing. She had the nerve to say that Caroline is “like us.”

“What does that even mean? She’s nothing like me,” I said.

“Like fun and open-minded. I don’t know, she seems cool,” Carly explained.

What was this girl even talking about? I have no issue with Caroline, but why was Carly acting like we were all going to hold hands and be best friends? After one dinner? I was annoyed by the entire thing.