I went, expecting a mind-numbingly boring time. I was never one for weddings, which was part of the reason why Ingrid’s proposition that we run off and elope just weeks after meeting each other had been so alluring—no wedding, no spectacle. Just a whirlwind romance and then a marriage.
The night of Ellie’s wedding was anything but boring.
It was a night that would have changed everything if only I had let it.
Ingrid and I had been married for two years—and I didn’t expect us to make it through two more. We’d been fighting almost constantly, and the icing on the cake was when I discovered, just a week prior to my friends’ wedding, that she was having an affair.
I’m not proud of returning the favor by cheating on her with Joey, but I won’t say I regret it either.
What Idoregret was Joey overhearing my conversation with my wife. And how I handled that.
Joey and I both said hurtful things. After I had time to cool down, I tried to call her. Straight to voicemail. I texted—the bubble turned green.
She’d blocked me.
I should have tried harder. I should have fought. I eventually came to realize that. But all we had had together was one passionate night. I was in the middle of a relationship that had started out passionate and devolved into a contentious, adversarial mess. How was I to have any confidence that a relationship with Joey wouldn’t end the same way?
I went back to Ingrid. I told her what I’d done, though I lied about one part and said it was with a stranger. She said she forgave me, but I think her forgiveness came from the fact that her life would have become indescribably different were she to divorce the millionaire husband who supported her.
That worked just fine by me.
We got into a cycle: We would fight for months; one of us would cheat on the other; the other person would “discover” the affair; we would go to couples therapy and pretend to forgive each other. We would pretend we were fine. And then we’d do it all again. Her favorite lie was to pretend she had a book club, conveniently forgetting I could track the location of her phone.
Or maybe she wanted me to see.
Meanwhile, Joey and I didn’t talk for seven years.
And then we did.
And then she died.
Three weeks after Joey died, I finally filed for divorce.
I’d like to say the shock of losing the woman who I realized I had been hung up on for the better part of a decade sparked me to make some sort of change in my life, something other than filing for a divorce I should have filed for seven years earlier, but it didn’t.
Other than my divorce, the only change her death sparked was that I adopted her asshole cat.
Ellie posted all over social media about how he was looking to rehome Joey’s cat. Apparently, no one would take her. Ellie said he would have kept her if Cat weren’t allergic—I’d been drunk enough to snort at the irony ofthat.
I waited a full day before I gave in and messaged him.
It took five minutes after meeting that demon spawn for me to figure out that Ellie had been a little less than honest. Sure, Cat might have had allergies—although I had my doubts—but the reason he wasn’t keeping Ruthie was obviously that she was a little hellion.
Ruthie loved scratching everything in sight. She bit and scratched me so often, I started wearing thick, long-sleeved sweaters as a general policy, even in the increasingly warm LA weather. She insisted on sleeping by my feet but attacked them whenever I shifted. Over time, I became adept at sleeping without moving at all.
No amount of money spent on Ruthie could make her love me.
I bought her treats and toys, hoping to find some magic combination that would make her realize I was her friend, but no such luck. When she wasn’t attacking me, she just sat there and stared as if she could see down to the core of me, to the myriad flaws I worked so hard to keep hidden from the world.
She was like her mother that way.
But it wasn’t all bad. Eventually, I came to realize that she did love me in her own standoffish-cat kind of way. I hired people to help outaround my house—what rich person doesn’t?—but Ruthie wouldn’t tolerate any of them. If one of them tried to clean her litter box, she attacked. If they tried to feed her, she acted like the food was poisoned. I had to do everything for her myself.
It felt good, being needed.
I loved that evil cat to bits for the nearly seven years I had her before she passed.
Other than that, I continued to live my life. I accumulated wealth that I spent a fraction of. I searched for love in people who were unable to give it to me. Probably for the best, since I was unable to give it back.
