Chapter 8 #3
That’s the thing about getting cheated on that no one really prepares you for—it’s not just the betrayal, though that would be enough on its own.
It’s what it does to your brain after, the way every interaction gets filtered through this new lens of suspicion.
Late night at work? Probably a lie. Phone goes straight to voicemail?
They’re definitely doing something they shouldn’t be.
Your amygdala goes haywire, your prefrontal cortex is trying to maintain some semblance of rational thought, and suddenly you’re operating from this constant state of fear and mistrust that you can’t logic your way out of no matter how many times you remind yourself that you’re probably just being irrational.
And I tried. I spent weeks after I found out trying to understand it from a purely neurological perspective, trying to see it as a series of decisions and circumstances rather than a fundamental character flaw in someone I thought I knew.
But at the end of the day, she made a choice.
Multiple choices, actually, over a span of months.
And each one moved her further away from me and Emma until one morning she just didn’t come home at all.
I could never trust her again. Even if she showed up tomorrow with apologies and promises and whatever explanation she’s convinced herself makes sense, I couldn’t do it.
Not just for me, but for Emma. To offer Emma the fragile hope of a reunited family, only to have it shatter again when the same corrosive patterns re-emerged?
That would be a cruelty far greater than the initial abandonment.
My daughter’s world has already been unmade once.
I will not be the architect of its second collapse.
That’s what cheating does to you—it rewires your entire threat detection system. It makes you see danger in places where there probably isn’t any, and there’s no easy way to undo that, no way to just decide to trust again like flipping a switch.
I think that the version of me who could love someone without reservation is gone. That man was dismantled, piece by piece, with every lie told by my ex-fiancée.
But watching Joe and Allison now, the easy affection and the way they navigate each other’s moods and quirks without apparent effort, I wonder if maybe I’ll ever find that again.
If I’ll ever meet someone who I can trust enough to let my guard down, to build something real and lasting, or if Rebecca’s choices broke something so detrimental in me that it can’t be repaired.
And Emma. Emma might just be an only child her whole life.
I used to think only children were weird, and honestly, I partially still think that’s true from what I’ve observed in my students who grew up that way.
They tend to be either overly mature from spending so much time around adults or socially awkward from not having to negotiate sibling dynamics.
They don’t learn that essential skill of sharing not because you want to but because you have to, or how to settle disputes without adult intervention, or how to read social cues from someone who knows you well enough to call you on your bullshit.
They grow up in this bubble where they’re the constant center of attention, which can create either incredible confidence or crippling pressure depending on how the parents handle it.
I was glad to have Maria growing up, even though we fought constantly and drove our parents insane with our bickering.
She borrowed my records and sweatpants without asking and I deliberately used vocabulary she didn’t understand just to make her feel stupid.
We competed over everything—grades, sports, who could make our dad laugh harder at dinner.
But underneath all that competitive hostility was this foundation of loyalty that I didn’t fully appreciate until I was older.
She was my built-in companion for every family vacation, my automatic partner for whatever scheme we were running, the person who knew exactly which of our relatives were worth talking to at holidays and which ones to avoid.
We clashed and butted heads and she drove me absolutely insane, but we were still best friends in that particular way that only siblings can be—the kind where you can hate each other and love each other simultaneously without it being contradictory.
Emma might never have that with anyone. My heart sinks a little thinking about it.
She’ll never have someone to conspire with against me when I’m being too strict or too logical.
No one to share the singular burden of being my child.
No lifelong comrade who is stuck with her, through every phase and folly, by the unbreakable bond of shared DNA and history.
And I’ll never talk about baby names with someone again.
The domestic future I meticulously, if quietly, imagined is ashes.
I’ll never debate whether Alyssa is pretty enough that other people might steal it, or whether Jean flows better than Marie, or if we should honor my side of the family or hers.
I’ll never sit in a pizza place watching my wife’s stomach move with a second child we made together, wondering if this one will have her eyes or my laugh or some odd combination that we can’t predict.
That version of my life is over. The trajectory I thought I was on—marriage, multiple kids, growing old with someone—isn’t happening anymore. My life is now a story of two: Leo and Emma. And I need to make peace with that. I need to accept that it’s enough. It has to be enough.
But watching Joe kiss the top of Allison’s head while she rants about name-stealing nurses, I can’t help feeling like something important is missing from my life, and I have no idea how to get it back.
Maria leans over and steals another mushroom off my pizza slice. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
She shrugs, but her eyes are doing that thing where they’re searching my face for something I’m not saying. “You just look…down.”
Maria’s always been able to see right through me.
It’s one of those sibling perks that I’m not always grateful for—the fact that she can read my moods from across a room, that she knows when I’m lying about being fine, that she can tell the difference between my normal baseline seriousness and actual sadness.
She might tease me relentlessly and steal food off my plate and give me shit about everything from my organizational systems to my dating life—or lack thereof—but underneath all of that is this bone-deep loyalty that came from our father and a formidable fierceness that came from our mother.
She’s not intimidated by anyone or anything, never has been, and she says exactly what’s on her mind whether you want to hear it or not.
Even now she’s looking at me with her eyebrows pulled together in that little V of worry, waiting for me to either tell her the truth or commit to the lie.
“I’m okay,” I say, and I give her a small nod, a smaller smile, trying to sell it.
She studies me for another second, then gives a short nod back. She doesn’t believe me—I can tell she doesn’t believe me—but she’s letting it go for now, which I appreciate more than I’d ever admit out loud.
Of course I’m okay. I always have to be okay.
Okay for Emma, who needs at least one stable parent.
Okay for my family so they don’t worry about me more than they already do.
Okay for my students and my colleagues and everyone else who’s depending on me to function like a normal human being instead of someone whose life imploded six months ago.
But maybe Allison was right. Maybe Annie would be the fresh start we needed.
I cling to that hope. Tomorrow must be a good day.
Not just adequate, but genuinely good. I have to believe that tomorrow Emma’s going to have a good day with someone who doesn’t treat her like she’s broken or difficult.
Someone who just sees her as a kid who’s hurting and needs patience and honesty and space to feel whatever she’s feeling without being judged for it.
The alternative is a path I cannot afford to contemplate.
So I will show up tomorrow, I will hand over my four-page single-spaced manifesto, I will attempt not to hover, and I will hope—with a desperation I keep locked behind my sternum—that the woman I fought on Avenue B can somehow, improbably, become the key to a new kind of peace for the small, storm-tossed girl who is my entire world.