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“Oh, now I’ve ruined the night, haven’t I? Me and my big mouth,” Penny says.
“No, not at all,” I say. “Let’s just forget about it. We’ve all got a past, haven’t we?”
Penny smiles and nods her head.
“Yeah, I guess we have,” she says.
We move the topic of conversation back onto safer ground and by the time Angela joins us again, we’re talking about the PTA at Emily’s school and how they keep trying to get Penny to join but she couldn’t think of anything worse to do with her evenings.
Another half hour passes, and Penny says it’s time she was taking off. She calls a cab, and we say our goodbyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Angela. “I thought Tyler would have been back by now.”
“Don’t worry,” she says.
“Why don’t I call a cab and I’ll just message him and tell him to meet me at my place,” I say.
“Honestly it’s fine,” Angela says. “It’s only seven o’clock. Have a few more drinks. He’ll turn up eventually.”
I nod my agreement and Angela stands up.
“Should we go inside? It’s getting a bit nippy out here,” she says.
“Sure,” I say.
I follow her inside, through the kitchen and into the living room where we sit down.
“Can I ask you something personal?” I say after a moment’s pause, Penny’s words still rattling around in my head.
Angela nods her head and sits forward to listen to me.
“Did Tyler cheat on his ex-wife?” I ask.
“Bloody Penny can’t keep her trap shut,” Angela says. “It all got a bit messy towards the end with those two. Tyler and Chloe, I mean, not Penny. Yeah, he cheated on her, that's why they got divorced. But it doesn’t mean he’ll do it to you.”
I nod my head. I know it doesn’t, but I would have preferred it if she had said Penny had it all wrong. She is slurring her words though and I wonder how much she really does know and how much she is embellishing because she’s had a drink.
I can’t help but think it’s probably true though. Penny had no reason to make up a lie about Tyler and no way would his own sister play along with it. She thinks he cheated on his ex-wife and that tells me a lot. Also, it suddenly makes sense of what Camille said to me at work. At the time when I found out she was friends with Chloe, I assumed she was just trying to cause trouble between Tyler and me out of loyalty to Chloe. Now though, I suspect that she likely heard about Tyler cheating too and while it might have been a nice little bonus if she split us up, maybe she genuinely was warning me, so I didn’t rush into anything and then get hurt. Maybe I should have thanked her instead of trying to think of a bitchy little comeback when she told me.
Angela has gone off to the bathroom and I’m sitting alone wondering whether or not I should confront Tyler about all of this. I decide quickly against it. It will only cause trouble. It will make life in the office damned awkward with Camille and worse, it could cause a rift in Tyler’s family if he gets mad at Angela for telling me about him cheating and that’s the last thing I want to do.
I decide I’m going to leave it all where it belongs – in the past. Like I said to Penny, we all have one, and we’ve all made mistakes and had moments we’re not proud of. I’m going to take Tyler as I find him and not judge him on a past relationship. I have no idea of any of the circumstances surrounding Tyler cheating – and that’s assuming that he did actually even cheat. They might have already been arguing and fighting and as good as done. Maybe she cheated on him first and he got revenge. Maybe she thought he was cheating and wouldn’t believe him when he said he wasn’t. There are so many ways it could have gone down and not one of them are really any of my business unless Tyler chooses to open up to me about that time in his life and tell me himself about it.
Angela comes back from the bathroom and starts talking to me about when her and Tyler were little and I let myself forget about everything else and just picture the two of them in her stories. I can’t help but laugh at some of the antics the two of them got up to when they were little. They sound like they were a right handful but sweet with it. The sort of kids you can’t stay mad at for too long.
Finally, Tyler reappears, and he joins us for a while, chatting and laughing along with us. It’s so funny listening to him and Angela, how they have different versions of the same story, her version blaming Tyler for whatever trouble they had gotten into this time, and his version blaming her for it. It definitely makes me wonder how different their stories would be when it comes to Tyler and him cheating on Chloe.
After a while, Tyler asks me if I’m ready to go and I say that I’m ready whenever he is. I thank Angela for a lovely day, and she says we should do it again sometime. I readily agree and I really mean it. I have had a great time and I’d love to get together with them all again. We hug and then Tyler hugs Angela and thanks her for keeping me company whilst he was busy.
We leave the house and go back to Tyler’s car. He pulls away from the house and we both wave to Angela as she watches us from the front step.
“You were gone ages,” I say. “What happened? It wasn’t Alex, was it?”
“Alex?” Tyler says, looking confused, but then he seems to remember who Alex is and he shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t Alex. It was Malcolm Croft. You know the one? We’re designing his summer house. He wants all of those colored pebbles for the gardens.”
I nod my head.
“He doesn’t seem like the demanding asshole type,” I point out.
