Jilted

Chapter 7 #2

Not necessarily. My ex-boyfriend had cheated on a guy in college, then realized what a huge mistake it was.

He’d lost an incredible relationship because of it, and even now in our mid-thirties, I didn’t think he’d ever fully gotten over that.

He was a man who would chew glass before he even thought about cheating again.

Selena, though—apparently cheating wasn’t a new thing for her. And apparently she’d lied to her best friend and her parents when she’d sworn she’d never do it again.

I wonder what else she lied about.

Ugh. That wasn’t a train of thought I needed to be on tonight. Fuck that.

I reread Madeline’s message, then wrote her back.

It’s on her, not you. Sorry it’s fucked things up between you and her.

Good riddance at this point. Are you going to be okay?

Eventually.

Do you need anything?

I’ll be okay. Thanks, though.

Okay but reach out if you need something. We’re all here for you.

I didn’t know who “we” entailed in that context, but I let her know I appreciated it. Then I put my phone aside, topped off my drink, and stared up at the sky again.

Chili evidently didn’t appreciate me focusing elsewhere, and he hopped up into my lap. His claws poked through my sweats as he kneaded on my legs.

“Buddy.” I popped one of his claws out of the fabric. “I’ll pet you, but could you not?”

He purred, bumped his head against my chin, and kept kneading.

I just chuckled and petted him. Eh, there were worse things than a purring cat’s claws.

Behind me, the sliding glass door opened wider, and I turned to see Jesse.

He peered through the gap and chuckled. “Ah, that’s where Chili went.” He rolled his eyes. “Traitor.”

I laughed softly, petting the fluffy black cat. “Not my fault he likes me better.”

Jesse scoffed. Then he sobered a little, and his expression turned… shy? Uneasy? It was hard to tell. Gesturing at the empty chair with a beer bottle I hadn’t noticed in his hand, he asked, “Do you, uh… Do you mind if I join you?”

My first instinct was to find a polite way to say I’d rather be alone. After today, that was all I wanted.

But Jesse was putting me up. And with him, I didn’t feel like I had to pretend to be stronger than I was.

I nodded at the other chair. “Not at all. Sit down.” I paused. “I, uh… I can’t promise I’m the best company right now.”

“That’s all right.” He came all the way out onto the balcony and eased into the other chair. Bringing the bottle up to his lips, he murmured, “I probably won’t be either.”

That was fair. Sometimes I had to stop and remind myself that Jesse had every reason to be heartbroken right now too. I’d been with Selena longer, and I’d been in the process of marrying her, but he’d obviously been invested in her too. The revelation that he was her sidepiece had hit him hard.

Hell, I couldn’t even imagine that. Not just realizing he’d been cheated on, but that he was the affair partner. What did that do to someone? How did someone process being the other man to someone he’d thought was his partner?

Shit. And I thought having to cancel a wedding hurt.

I sipped my drink. “Do you mind if I ask about you and her?”

He winced, dropping his gaze to the bottle in his hands. After a moment, he turned to me and shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t want to pour salt in your wounds, though.”

“There is that.” I watched myself petting Chili, who had flopped down in my lap. “I don’t know if I’m feeling extra masochistic today, or if I’m just trying to get it all out of my system.”

Jesse grunted. “Eh. Sometimes you have to drag it all out and deal with it to get past it.”

I laughed humorlessly. “Is that why my previous ex was always trying to get me to talk about feelings?”

He turned to me with a halfhearted grin. “Yours too, huh?”

“Yep. He wanted couples counseling—the whole nine yards.”

Jesse’s eyebrows jumped. “Yeah? Did it help?”

I shrugged. “I mean, we ended up splitting up, obviously, but I think it helped us split up more peacefully. We went from screaming matches and cold shoulders to calmly spelling out why we weren’t good for each other.”

His lips quirked and he mirrored my shrug. “I can see that.”

“Made me a better partner, too, I think.” I huffed a dry laugh as I brought up my glass. “Lot of good that did me.”

“Probably did you plenty of good. Not your fault it was wasted on someone who treated you like shit.”

I held up my glass. He clinked his beer bottle against it. We both sipped, and we sat in silence for a moment.

After a while, he cautiously asked, “So… me and her. What do you want to know?”

I chewed my lip and gazed down at the cat in my lap.

Where to even start? I didn’t want to know anything.

At the same time, I thought it might help me put some of this to bed.

Eventually. Or, hell, maybe I really was feeling masochistic, and the alcohol was soaking in enough to dissolve my filters and inhibitions, so why the fuck not?

Finally, I whispered, “How did you find out?” I looked at him. “About me?”

Jesse pushed out a long, harsh breath, and he watched himself thumbing the label on his beer bottle. “She asked me to fix something on her laptop. When I pulled up her browser to download a driver, one of the tabs that opened automatically was her Instagram. But it wasn’t an account I recognized.”

My insides twisted. Though I was almost certain I knew the answer, and that I didn’t actually want confirmation, I asked anyway: “Because you didn’t know she had Instagram? Or because you followed her on a different account?”

“Different account,” he rasped.

I reached for my glass and drained it. As I topped it off again, Jesse continued.

“I didn’t think much of it in the moment, but it bugged me. So before I finished with her laptop, I looked at the account again. Then when I was on my phone, I looked it up.” He made a mock toast gesture with his beer bottle. “And… there it all was.”

“Wow,” I said. “That must’ve been a kick in the balls.”

“One after another, yeah. The wedding planning posts were a hard hit. But then when I saw a photo of you and her…” He shook his head slowly.

“That’s when I realized she was still with you.

That I was her…” He grimaced and stared out into the night.

“I swear to God, I have never felt more disgusting than I have since I found that Instagram.”

“I bet. And you two—it started after we all hooked up?”

He nodded slowly. “She texted me a couple of weeks after. She was all upset because you two had broken up, and…” Jesse made a disgusted sound and rolled his eyes.

“I just had to play the white knight and offer to take her out to get her mind off things. We ended up back here, and I never suspected a goddamned thing.” His jaw worked as he shook his head.

When he spoke again, there was a brittle edge to his voice, “I still can’t believe I was that stupid.

Like, looking back, all the red flags were there, but I was just…

” He pressed his lips together. Then he swiped at his eyes and muttered, “Fuck…”

I gave him a moment to collect himself. Curiosity was prodding at me, but I wasn’t in this to kick him while either of us was down.

Turned out I didn’t even need to ask. “She very, very rarely wanted to stay over, and she never had me back at your place.” He scoffed. “She said there were too many bad memories there, and even sex with me would still be weird because we’d all—the three of us—fooled around in that bed.”

I winced, those once sexy memories turning my stomach now.

“I couldn’t believe how many photos she had with her friends on that account,” he went on.

“She swore she’d only had mutual friends with you because she’d moved here to be with you.

So when you two broke up, she didn’t have anyone else.

And her parents live like half a dozen states away.

” He let his head fall back against the sliding glass door.

“I bought it all and didn’t think anything of never meeting her friends or family.

” Raking a hand through his hair, he added, “It’s so damn obvious now. ”

“Fuck,” I muttered. “She thought of everything, didn’t she?”

“Except making sure I didn’t see that browser tab,” he grumbled into his beer bottle.

“Yeah. No kidding.”

He put the bottle on the table and looked at me. “She has friends and family here, doesn’t she?”

Pursing my lips, I nodded. “She grew up here. Her parents live fifteen minutes away from—from the house she and I rented.”

Jesse laughed bitterly. “Of course they do.”

We sat in silence for a while. It was again Jesse who broke that silence. “I wonder what her endgame was.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how long did she actually think she could do the double life thing? Especially since I’d made some noise about—” His eyes flicked toward me. Then he lowered his gaze and sheepishly murmured, “I’d… Like I said before, I thought we’d get married.”

I winced. He had mentioned that previously, but I’d all but forgotten. My head was just swimming with so much these days, I lost details. Hearing him tell me again was like hearing it the first time, and it fucking stung.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s not your fault. We both got fucked over.

I don’t even…” I paused to pull my thoughts into order.

“We’re both victims in this, you know? And like, I’m angry that I’m sad at all.

About losing her. About any of it. I should hate her for what she did, but right now, I just…

I miss the woman I was engaged to.” I rewound what I’d said, then let go of a bitter laugh.

“Damn. My old counselor would be so proud.”

Jesse chuckled too. “I know, right? Who knew all that therapy would come in handy?”

“Seriously. Just don’t tell her about the…” I picked up the Jack Daniels bottle and gestured with it before splashing some more into my glass.

“Secret’s safe with me,” he muttered. “And I don’t think it has to make sense. There’s no manual for this shit, you know? I’m just glad you didn’t get pissed at me. Not that I would’ve blamed you.”

I was already shaking my head. “I think it was too much of a shock in the moment. And then about the time I would’ve gotten mad, I’d thought about it enough to realize you didn’t do anything.

Hell, you saved me from marrying her. And…

” I gestured over our shoulders. “You’re giving me a place to stay while I get my shit together. ”

“Kind of seems like the least I can do.”

“No.” I shook my head again, more emphatically this time as I scratched Chili’s rump. “You don’t owe me a thing, Jesse. You did me a huge solid by telling me. Helping me get out and giving me a place to crash—that’s above and beyond.”

His shoulders relaxed minutely. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just felt really bad about everything.”

“I know. I get it. And hey, you said yourself that feelings don’t have to make sense.”

“Thank God for that, because they sure as fuck don’t.”

“Ugh. No. They don’t. Like… I always thought if someone cheated on me, I’d just hate them. I’d walk out with both middle fingers held high and think of what an asshole they were. I didn’t expect…” I swallowed hard as some of those unexpected feelings tried to close in. “I hate that I miss her.”

Saying those words out loud almost made me heave. Why the fuck did I miss this woman who’d run me through the wringer?

“I get it,” Jesse whispered.

“You do?”

He nodded, staring out at the night sky again.

“I mean, I wouldn’t take her back after this.

Not in a million years. I could never trust her again, and I sure as shit wouldn’t want to touch her again.

” He sniffed sharply, and when he turned to me, a hint of tears glittered on his lower lashes.

“But it’s hard to let go of who I thought she was. ”

Fuck. Ouch.

I took a deep swallow from the glass and stared up at the night sky, telling myself again that it was the alcohol making my eyes sting.

“That’s what it is, isn’t it?” I almost choked on the words and all the emotions that were bubbling up.

“I don’t miss her. At all. But goddamn, you’re right. The person I thought she was…”

“Does that mean we were gullible idiots?” he croaked. “Or was she just that good at selling a lie?”

I thought about it. “Maybe both?”

He laughed softly. “Yeah. Maybe.” He peered into his beer bottle. “Ugh. I need more alcohol.” He pushed himself to his feet. “You want anything?”

I shook my head. “I’m good.”

He gave a little nod and slipped inside, leaving the slider open enough for a cat to get through. Not that Chili seemed at all interested—he was quite comfortably situated in my lap.

I petted him, enjoying the low rumble of his purr. A memory flashed through my mind of noticing some cat hair on one of her hoodies while I was doing laundry. I’d dismissed it in the moment because maybe one of her friends had a cat I didn’t know about.

I had to wonder now if those had been evidence of her affair. I just hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t been aware of Chili’s existence, never mind who owned him.

Still petting him, I sighed and gazed up at the sky again.

Two weeks ago, I’d had no reason to believe tonight would be anything other than my wedding night. Now, here I was—getting shitfaced and teary-eyed on the balcony of the condo owned by my ex’s affair partner.

Some part of me—the part that still cared about the version of Selena I’d been engaged to—wondered what she was doing tonight. If she was okay. How she was coping.

The rest of me was all too aware of my life getting turned on its ass, and she could go fuck herself.

I’d be okay. I had no idea how I’d move on from this. I had no idea what my life would look like a month, six months, a year down the line. Two weeks ago, I’d had no idea I’d be spending the night of my canceled wedding commiserating with the man she’d been cheating with.

But here I was.

And hopefully… somehow…

I’d be okay.