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Nodding slowly, Emily confirmed, “You’re right. Both of you are so right.”
“I can’t imagine what would ever possess someone to do something like this,” Brooke declared. “I mean, even if the guy isn’t worried about losing his marriage, what about his children? Isn’t it too much of a risk to his family?”
Emily didn’t hesitate to respond. “Apparently not. Then again, he probably never thought I’d find out the truth.”
Truth be told, the way Emily had learned about Ryan’s deception was a bit unconventional. Following a long and arduous day at work on Wednesday, Emily had gone home and zipped through her normal routine, eager to do what she needed to do, so she could relax for a while. When she finally climbed into bed, she decided to scroll through Facebook for a few minutes.
That’s when the wife of a distance relative of Emily’s had posted up photos from a wedding they’d attended the prior weekend. At first, Emily hadn’t thought anything of it and merely scrolled through the photos absentmindedly.
But then one photo caught her eye, because her boyfriend was in it.
Not only had Ryan not mentioned he was going to a wedding that weekend, but he was in three separate pictures, and in each of them, there was a woman with him. The same woman.
Emily tried not to react negatively to it at first, wanting to believe the best about Ryan and assuming it had to be a relative or close family friend. But just because she wanted to believe the best didn’t mean she didn’t intend to do any investigative work.
Since Ryan didn’t have his own Facebook account, he wasn’t tagged in any of the photos. The woman was. And when Emily clicked on her profile, she was horrified to see the woman shared the same last name with Ryan and was in hundreds of photos with him. When Emily made it to the pictures of Ryan holding his newborn children with captions mentioning him being such a proud dad, she knew she’d been duped.
“So, I assume you’ve spoken to him since you found out?” I asked, after swallowing a bite of my food.
“Oh, I would have been all over it that night,” Brooke revealed.
With our eyes pinned on Emily, she took a sip of her drink before she finally shared, “I didn’t do anything at first. Well, other than not sleeping, that is. I tossed and turned all night. I had wanted to reach out to him, but I decided to wait, because I wanted to see his face when I confronted him.”
“And?” I pressed, ignoring my food for a moment, hanging on to every word and needing more.
“We had plans for Thursday. I hadn’t realized it before, but it all makes sense now. Thursdays had become our day. Of course, he’d always throw in an extra day here and there, but Thursday evenings were always a thing for us.”
Brooke all but slammed her glass down on the table and muttered, “I can only imagine what he must have been telling his wife he was doing.”
“It’s funny you say that, because that’s precisely what I asked him when he showed up at my place on Thursday.”
I couldn’t handle the suspense. “What did he say?”
For the next several moments, Emily didn’t respond. It was easy to see the regret and disappointment taking over. She hated that she’d allowed herself to be deceived by him. “He just sort of stood there with a stupid expression on his face. I don’t know how long he intended to have this thing continue, but it was clear he realized his time with me was up. I kicked him out of my place and told him I never wanted to see him again.”
“Did he leave or try to offer an explanation?” Brooke asked.
“Yeah. And what about his wife? Did he tell her? Are you planning to let her know?” I felt bad about how we were bombarding Emily, but I had so many questions. I started shoveling the rest of my food into my mouth, so I’d stop long enough to allow her to respond.
“Ryan tried to tell me that he planned on leaving his wife because he loved me.” Emily sighed and rolled her eyes. “He was apologetic, claiming he just needed to be careful about how he did everything, since he has his children to think about.”
Brooke and I sent horrified looks to one another before returning our attention to Emily. She realized what we were both thinking and immediately declared, “I don’t believe him. God, I’m not that gullible. He lied to me from the start, and I feel like an absolute fool, but I’m not buying his lies any longer. As for his wife, I haven’t really decided what to do about her yet. I mean, if I were in her shoes, I’d want to know my husband is cheating on me.
“Me, too,” I chimed in, setting my utensils down on my empty plate.
“Same here.”
Emily nodded her agreement and explained, “But I also realize not everyone sees things the way I do, the way the three of us do. She might not be very receptive to the idea of a woman she doesn’t know approaching her to let her know her husband’s been unfaithful. I’ve already suffered enough trauma as it is. I don’t need any additional stress on my plate. I don’t know. I think I’m going to work on getting myself past this first. Then I can focus on how to handle it with her.”
“Gosh, Em, this is awful. I’m so sorry,” Brooke lamented as she pushed her plate back a bit.
Nodding, I added, “Yeah, I don’t even know what to say. And I’m never at a loss for words. This is just so unbelievable.”
Emily, who’d picked at her food all throughout dinner, shook her head with disappointment. “I feel so gross. If I had known he was married from the start, I never would have gotten involved. I’m not a homewrecker, and he turned me into one. Men are such trash.”
“You can say that again,” I muttered.
I hadn’t intended for that to come out the way it did, and my best friends knew me well enough to know something had happened.
