But it’s Teddy’s quote that sends the “woman scorned” energy inside me surging to previously unimagined heights.
I have to read the section twice to believe the man had the fucking gall…
Madison reaches for Theodore’s hand as we settle onto a sun-dappled bench, framed by Spanish moss that drifts toward them on the breeze, as if it, too, longs to get closer to their magnetic energy.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” Theodore says, with the quiet conviction of a man who’s found his way home. “What Madison and I have… She’s shown me what real partnership is all about. What it looks like to build a life with someone who truly sees you, all of you, and welcomes your light and your darkness with open arms.”
He pauses, glancing at his fiancée with unmistakable tenderness. Madison squeezes his hand, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
“I’m genuinely grateful now that I didn’t settle down earlier, before I was ready,” Theodore continues. “It’s given me perspective. Looking back at those previous relationships, even the longer ones that felt so significant at the time… Well, I can see now they were more style than substance. About what looked good on paper, not what felt right in my heart, my soul. This is different. Madison is different. This is real in a way I didn’t realize was possible before she came into my life.”
Style than substance?
Good on paper?
The words blur on the screen.
Eight years. I gave this man eight years of my life. Most of my thirties, the decade everyone said I should be using to “settle down” and “get a ring on it,” I spent navigating Theodore James Delacorte’s emotional minefield.
But I didn’t mind. I was so certain he was the one. I never shied away from any part of him, including the darkest darks.
The memories come rolling in with the force of the storm surge that left NOLA in shambles this summer. Teddy, in a dark suit at his mother’s funeral, his hand gripping mine so tight my fingers went numb. I cancelled three client meetings to be there, held him while he cried, and stayed up with him until he’d cleaned every dress out of her closet and “the mother smell” was banished from the giant Victorian he’d inherited.
I couldn’t have done this without you, Char. I couldn’t have lived through it. This would have destroyed me.
Move in, baby. Please. You can have the entire top floor for your home office, your workout room, whatever you need.
Just don’t leave.
Seven months later, he was back to pulling away again, saying he needed “space to finish grieving.”
I had to move all my belongings into storage and myself into a short-term rental until the people I’d leasedmyhouse to were ready to move out. But I’d still been there for him, even when he said he wanted to break up and be “just friends” until he’d dealt with all the stress associated with his mother’s estate and the recent downsizing at his law firm.
How could I tell him to go to hell when he’d just been fired and was having panic attacks almost every day? Instead, I helped him research therapists, made appointments he’d cancel at the last minute, and coached him through breathing exercises at two in the morning.
I’d also celebrated with him six months later when he finally landed the partnership at Russo & Klein—I couldn’t have done this without you, angel. You saved me. I mean that. You’re just…everything, Char. Absolutely everything.
Things were good for the next year, but eventually he needed “time” again. Time to decide if he wanted biological children too much to settle down with someone who couldn’t conceive. Time to decide if he was “good enough for me,” and could give me “everything I deserved.”
I gave him time.
Eight years, in bits and pieces. I followed the breadcrumbs of affection he trailed behind him, clung to hope through years of being treated like a goddess he couldn’t live without one month, then downgraded to “buddy” status when he ran out of bandwidth for a relationship “as serious and intense” as ours.
And now I’m “style not substance?”
My hands shake as I set the phone down.
The humiliation is worse than the heartbreak. At least heartbreak is private, and I finally woke up to what anemotionally abusive jerk Teddy was about eighteen months ago when I said “goodbye” for the last time.
My heart has healed from that part. Thoroughly. Completely. And faster than I would have thought possible when I was still swept up in his narcissistic drama spiral.
But this? This is public erasure, in black and white, for all our friends and clients to read. He’s taken eight years of my life—eight years of love and support and patience and loyalty—and dismissed it in a glossy magazine profile like it never mattered.
LikeInever mattered.
And Madison? Well, she can eat rocks.
She met Teddythrough mewhile planning his firm’s holiday party. God had nothing to do with it. I hired her straight out of Tulane, taught her how to build a business from nothing, took her to industry events, and introduced her to everyone I knew. I even helped her launch her own company when she was ready to spread her wings and fly.
