“Do you really need to ask that, Syd?”
Sydney huffed on the other end. “Look, I’m trying to get a facial and the school keeps calling me. Harper got in a fight. One of us needs to go in.”
I don’t want to be the guy who blames his ex-wife for everything, but it was no secret that Sydney operated as a mean girl of sorts. That’s not to say I’m not an asshole, because I am. But I did what I could to only pass the beneficial parts of being an asshole on to our kids: being able to stand up to bullies and not giving a fuck what other people think.
Well, it could have been either of our encouragement that made Harper get into a fight. This kid Serena had pushed Harper off the playset and I told her to do whatever she needed to do.
My jaw tightened so much, Jeff could probably see it in my ass cheeks. “I’m currently doing something for work.”
“Jack,” Sydney’s voice took on a well-practiced whine. “This facialist is super-hard to get into.”
“Yeah, Syd, and who’s paying for that? Your dentist boyfriend or my child support that you needed so badly?”
“Oh, fuck off, Jacques,” she hissed. “It’s your day with the kids. You should go get her.”
It’s not that I didn’t want to have my kids. I did. But what I was doing actually brought in money, unlike whatevershe was doing to maintain whatever it was she thought needed maintaining. “Syd, I’m really in the middle of something.”
“Actually, we’re almost finished!” Jeff chimed in from behind me. I lifted to shoot him a death glare over my shoulder.
“It’s your day! I think the attorney will be very interested to know that you refused to care for our children.”
That was rich. At first, Sydney was willing to give me full custody, until she found out that it would be especially difficult for her to get any of my money that way. I’d gladly have taken the kids all to myself, and maybe negotiate full custody after I retired and didn’t have to travel for work. I had a nanny to fill in the gaps when I had to be gone for games and practices, which was a good amount of the time. On this day during school hours though, I didn’t have a backup nanny to go get the kids.
Nannies were never guaranteed anyway. Sydney made it a point to scare whoever was the nanny of the week at every handoff. She’d pick on their clothes, or find some way they’d “neglected” the kids, like a ketchup smear on their clothes or a nose that should have been given a tissue. This treatment of other women wasn’t isolated to nannies. When we were married, Sydney bullied other hockey wives and girlfriends to a scary degree. She can be very charming and very convincing, which helped her ingratiate herself in that group. But if things didn’t go 100% her way, she melted down. Eventually, I snapped from trying to placate her all the time. I think there might have been a celebration among some WAGs after I said I was divorcing her.
So for these poor young women who came to be my nannies, usually in their early twenties and quite good with our kids, it was a completely unwarranted attack. We were currently on our fourth nanny in six months. The nanny agency was so close to cutting us off.
Soon enough, I’d be able to retire, and potentially cut her out and have them all to myself. That’s what Sydney really wantedanyway, but I knew she was doing a delicate dance of courting her dentist to the stars. If she married him, she’d probably give up her custody. But until she had another source to pay for her facials, I’d likely still be on the hook.
Why did I marry such a terrible person in the first place? Great question. I was sad and lonely and let’s be real, I’m kind of a dick. I could bag someone for a night, but not for life. Sydney made it abundantly clear that with her, I’d never be lonely again.
For a little while, she made good on that. Sydney turned so quickly that I hardly even noticed it, a gradual shift that somehow felt overnight. But I was committed. I wanted her to be happy. If she was happy, she made me happy.
Until I realized her happiness was contingent on everyone else’s misery and her being the center of attention.
So since I divorced her, I was always looking for opportunities to cut her out fully—before she corrupted our sweethearts of kids.
This was my opportunity to step up to the plate—and she knew it.
“I’ll go get her,” I resigned.
THREE
MARA
SEPTEMBER
Of course,the day Los Angeles decided it would be cute to rise above its standard seventy-two degrees, my car’s air conditioning gave up the ghost. By the time I pulled up to Aspen’s school, my armpits, underboobs, and even my effing eyelids were sweating.
I grabbed a Taco Bell napkin from my glovebox and dabbed all the dampness away. I checked my makeup, which was only partially sliding off my face. I practiced my pleasant can-do customer service voice while wiping mascara smears from under my lashes.
Whatever this is, I’m sure we can all work it out.
I got buzzed in at the school’s office. I flashed a bright smile at the receptionist. “I’m Mara O’Connell, here for Aspen?”
“The girl’s dad just beat you here,” she grumbled. “Go on back.”
I breathed a mental sigh of relief that it was Harper’s dad and not her mom. The last time I tried to talk to her mom at a birthday party, I felt like I’d never been judged so hard in my life. She acted nice, but everything she said felt like it had a hiddenbarb behind it. It was probably the equivalent of talking to a snake.
