As if I didn’t feel bad already.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay,” I change the subject. “But when you’re ready, I’m here.”
He pauses. “It’s okay. I’ll tell you.”
I notice he’s out of coffee, so I get up and refill both of our mugs. “Do you want to sit someplace more comfortable?”
“No. This is fine.”
I pass him a full mug then sit down on my stool, facing him.
“When I thought you were - with Owen - I was beside myself. I felt kicked in the teeth,” Aaron says.
I bristle at this. “I thought you were going to tell me the Sabine story.”
“It’s part of it. As I said, it wasn’t losing whatever started between us, but I lost my best friend too. I was spiraling. Sabine was there. She was convenient. But, she’s also a narcissist who manipulates everyone around her.
“She homed in on me because I was hurting. She asked me what I wanted in a partner. I told her. Then, she started saying all the right things to make me feel like she would be a good fit in my life. I couldn’t have you, but I thought she might be the next best thing. So, I didn’t waste any time in asking her to marry me.”
I don’t want to hear about his fairy-tale - dark as it may be - life with Sabine. But maybe this is my penance for what I’ve done.
“Two weeks before the wedding,” Aaron continues. “I was at her house, and a call came in. She looked at the caller ID and didn’t answer. When I asked who it was, she told me it was her doctor’s office confirming an appointment. I thought nothing of it until I had to use her phone later and saw the call came from a guy’s name, not a doctor’s name in the area. I checked.
“That was the first red flag, but I ignored it because the next day, she told me she was pregnant.”
I suck in a breath. “Was she?”
“She was. I found out later that her lies always had a grain of truth in them,” Aaron waves his hand as if this is an everyday occurrence. And maybe for him, it was. “She did have a doctor’s appointment to confirm the pregnancy. But she also had other men calling her. She hooked up with them before and after our wedding.
“Seven years into the marriage, with three daughters, I got a phone call at work one day. It was this guy who was pissed as hell at Sabine. Seems he bought her a cell phone, so they could communicate with each other, without me knowing, but she was using that phone to hook up with other men, too.”
I cannot help myself. I nearly snort coffee through my nose. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”
Aaron bites his lip. “It’s pretty funny now, but it sucked at the time. The guy gave me printouts of the phone calls and texts to drive the nail into the coffin that was their adulterous relationship.”
“Did you confront her?”
“Oh, I did,” he nods. “She cried and said she had a problem. Then, she suggested counseling because she loved me and wanted to work it out. Like a sucker, I agreed to go. And things got better for a while. She stopped being secretive - or, so I thought. She’d call me all the time at work to tell me how much she loved me and how much she wanted to work on our relationship. She’d leave notes in my lunch. Inside my firefighting boots. She bought me extravagant gifts. When we went to parties, she’d stand around telling people all of the things she loved about me.
“It was flattering, at first. It felt like she was all-in on rekindling our marriage. But then, it became over the top and felt manipulative.”
I’m staring at him with my mouth hanging open.
“It’s called love bombing. It’s a manipulation technique used by narcissists. Which I learned when she strayed again, and we went back into counseling. We spent nearly ten years in counseling until I finally pulled the plug. I figured if it didn’t work out by now, it probably wouldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you file for divorce?”
“Oh, I tried filing at least three different times, and each time, she love bombed her way back.”
“I don’t understand why you’d keep doing that to yourself.”
He shrugs. “I had been with her for so long. She knew everything about me. We had kids together. And the thought of being one of those divorced couples that shares custody didn’t sit right with me. Plus, she’d been a constant in my life. I didn’t know what I’d do being single again. I had no idea how to date in the age of online dating.”
“So, because you were afraid of dating, you decided to stay married to a big-ass cheater?” I yell and stand.
I don’t know why I’m getting pissed about all this. Sabine didn’t cheat on me. But somewhere, deep down inside my heart, I feel like Sabine ruined my chances for a happy ever after. She latched onto Aaron before we could work out our differences. And it wasn’t until this moment that I realized how fucking pissed I was about everything.
I take one look at Aaron’s stricken face. It’s not simply my happy ever after ruined. It was his too.
