“Our little night together that weekend a couple of months ago.”
I turned and stared at Ethan. “What night, Ethan?”
“You all have a nice night. Ethan, I’ll call tomorrow.” Pandora turned and headed to her car and hopped inside. I knew the only way she knew where we were was because of Ethan’s mother.
“Ethan, what night?” I repeated.
“It was while we were separated, baby—and it was just the one time, I swear.”
Ethan and I separated for a few months a while back. Our relationship had become so tense and communication so strained that we couldn’t work out anything. He had moved out of the apartment, and I had gotten to a point that I wanted to end it all. We couldn’t seem to work things out until we’d finally gone to see Dr. Giselle Champagne, a marriage counselor. We had only been reunited a few weeks.
“Take me home!” I demanded and plopped down in the passenger seat.
I pulled the door from his hands and slammed it, while he ran around to the driver’s side. My heart hurt and my spirit just tumbled helplessly into a dark hole. How had this perfect night fallen so easily apart?
Ethan hopped in the car and started the ignition. “Baby, listen to me. When I say?—”
“You never told me that you had gotten back with her. How could you do that to me, Ethan? To us.”
“I’m sorry, baby. It meant nothing to me. It was the night you served me with the divorce papers before I convinced you to change your mind. I was broken and struggling, and she was just there.”
“How convenient. Just where, Ethan? At your job? In your apartment? In your bed?”
“She dropped by because I called her,” he confessed.
“I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that you went on a date or two, but I didn’t expect it to be with your ex, and I didn’t expect that you were having sex with anyone. Why would you go back to her of all people? Do you still love her?”
“No, I don’t still love her. She was just convenient for what it was at the time. Just sex. No emotions.”
“How can I believe you when you spent five years with this girl? How do I know that when times get tough between us again you won’t run back to her? How did you sleep with her without using protection?”
“She’s someone I trusted. I always had sex with her unprotected. We didn’t think about it; we just fell back into a habit.”
“You must think that I’m stupid as hell. That girl knew what she was doing. Now you’re stuck with her. I can promise you one thing: I cannot just forgive and forget that easily, especially knowing that a child is coming forth. Now we will always have Pandora in our lives because of this child.”
“Baby, calm down and listen to me. We can figure some things out.”
Ethan sped through the streets on the way back to our condo, trying to calm me down. His words fell on deaf ears. When we arrived home, I jumped out of the car and ran into the house, not bothering to wait for him to turn off the ignition.
When he walked through the door, I threw my wedding ring at him. “I’m done, Ethan!”
“Baby, please don’t do this. We just got back together and are just getting back into our flow.”
“I’m not certain that I can live a life with you and be happy knowing this child will be a part of our lives. That baby willalways be a reminder of what you did. I can’t take it out on that child, but I also don’t want to live with resentment in my heart against this child—and I refuse to deal with Pandora.”
“It’s an innocent baby, Sevyn. You can’t blame the child for what his or her parents did.”
“I know. I’m not blaming the child. I’m blaming you.”
“Please, don’t leave me, baby. I love you. You’re my world. I screwed up.”
“Ethan, the reason that we broke up in the first place was because you weren’t able to put boundaries in place where she was concerned. She was still calling you and texting you, and I wasn’t comfortable with you being her friend. Your only answer was that her family were old friends with yours, and your mom expected loyalty to that. Fuck what it was doing to our marriage. We couldn’t agree about her being in your life, and I asked you to give me some space. You agreed. How did you turn around and screw her when she was the cause of our separation?” I cried.
My husband reached out to touch me, but I was disgusted by the images I saw in my mind’s eye: him holding her, him kissing her, and him sexing her.
“Baby, please don’t do this. I’m so sorry.”
I pushed him away. “I need some space and time.”
