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He took me to spa days, rubbed my feet at night, and mourned the fact that he hadn’t done these things earlier, that we had to go through the trauma of a divorce and put my children through hell for him to learn how to be a father.
I took it all as my due and felt no guilt or shame for any of it. He was learning how to treat me the way I wanted and not the way he thought I should be, which could be two different things altogether, and I had the freedom of telling him to yeet his ass out of my house whenever I didn’t feel like being bothered.
My kids were happy, though, and that was something. There was no more monster wanna-be stepmom in their lives and they didn’t have to share their dad’s time with a stranger. On the nights I kicked him out of my bed he’d show up first thing in the morning to help me get the kids off to Pre-K while I slept in. Isn’t he such a sweetheart?
* * *
I pulled back on the revenge a lot these last few weeks because I’m too damn pregnant for the drama of it all, but I still zing him every once in a while. Like when I went into labor, brought on by a rather deep back shot, or side shot, whatever you wanna call it. Look, he was behind me while I laid on my side propped up by pillows okay.
Anyway, I thought I was cumming, but it was a hell of a lot more than that. Justin rushed me to the hospital looking nervous as hell, and I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking because I’d spent the last few days convincing him that I still wasn’t sure whose baby it was and I wasn’t sure if we could keep seeing each other if it was Tim’s.
Our son was born ten hours after we got to the hospital, and two days later, the DNA results came in. You should’ve seen him preening like a peacock because he’d won the coin toss. Bless his heart!
We took our baby home, and he put his foot down and I reluctantly agreed not to see Tim anymore. I even called him while Justin was in the room and told him it was over. My poor cousin probably thinks I’m on something, but I’ll explain things to her later. She was half deaf, so she was the lucky candidate for the call since he insisted on being there.
I still refused his marriage proposal because I was very happy with the way things were. And when we took our boy home, he stepped up and did what he should’ve done with the other three. I didn’t have to get him up in the night for feedings and diaper changes. He took a full six months off for paternity leave and did most of the heavy lifting for the first three of those.
He had no idea I was watching his every move. I didn’t want him just doing things to make me happy; I wanted him to enjoy his time with his kids, and I saw it for the first time in forever. He was happy, the kids were happy, so I allowed him to move back in after having him sign something that said he had no rights to the house and that it was all mine. He was already paying for it as part of the divorce decree anyway but still, I wasn’t taking any chances.
* * *
“I don’t want any more kids, so you’re gonna need to get a vasectomy and not one of those faulty ones that can malfunction at any time.” Jamie was three months old, and that’s how long it had been since we’d had sex. I wanted to heal, but I also wanted to see what his reaction would be.
Surprisingly, he didn’t kick up a fuss, and nothing changed. He was still as involved as before, even more so because he had a whole lot of energy since there were no bedroom gymnastics going on.
It’s true I didn’t want more kids, but that’s not why I told him to get snipped. That was to protect my kids. On the off chance he lost his damn mind again and went sniffing around some other bitch, he would never be able to get her with child; therefore, no other kids could lay claim to what rightfully belonged to my kids. Besides, if he had to pay some other chick child support, that might cut into mine, and I wasn’t having that shit. No one was taking food out of my kids’ mouths.
I made him pay for this one, too, went through the lawyer and everything, he was pissed. Not about the money, but because I chose to go this route instead of just getting married again.
“Let me ask you a question. If you had a job that paid you ten dollars an hour, and you lost that job and found one paying twenty dollars an hour, would you go back to the first one if they begged you to come back?”
“Of course not; that makes no sense economically.” Wax on why don’t you about how stupid it would be.
“When we were married, you gave me money to run the house, pay the bills, and take care of the kids’ needs. Now you have to pay me almost ten times what you were giving me back then every month. Tell me why the hell I should give that up for a piece of paper that meant nothing to you the first time. I was born on a day, but it wasn’t yesterday.”
“But, what about the kids? They’ll get bullied by the other kids in school.”
“Other kids have divorced parents; pull the other one. Look, I gave in on giving Jamie your last name; don’t push it.” That settled that argument for a bit, but he’s prone to bringing it up every so often.
* * *
THE BITCH
* * *
It’s over. He’s back with her now, and they look so happy while I’ve been run out of town. After that whole social media fiasco, word spread like wildfire through my hometown, and my safe haven was no longer safe. My parents were already tired of me being there anyway since I was of no help to them financially or otherwise.
Their old friends were giving them shit, and nobody wanted me around their husbands, so I was made to stay behind closed doors, which I didn’t mind because I got tired of the whispers and stares every time I stepped out the front door.
I was never able to find out who had posted that video that started it all, but I knew the day things really ended for me and Justin. Even after being driven away again from the job, I still had other plans in mind, ways that I could run into him. But he was always with her or the kids, and there was never an opportunity,
He never ever tried to call and seemed to have blocked me everywhere. Even she had blocked me, so there was no way for me to get the latest news on their lives. But how I knew we were over was the day he sent me those pictures of me before the surgeries.
It ate me up inside for a long time that she’d seen them and had laughed at me. Imagining the two of them laughing at me was one of the worst things I’ve ever had to endure, even worse than the day my father threw a few dollars at me and told me it was time to leave.
I didn’t know what to do. I was down but not beaten. I went back to my online forums with a new search in mind and found a minefield of information. I was done with men my age; no way was I going to suffer this humiliation again.
I found a job many miles away and started over. At twenty-nine, I was still not too old to start over and I still looked good once I got cleaned up, but even I could see the dullness in my eyes. Justin had been my one true love.
