The Other Other Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

more crap to carry and to have to keep track of. If one child was sleeping, the other was resisting, and they were both extremely early risers. I was always on edge and definitely had a touch of the baby blues for several months, but I felt like I got used to the new routine eventually. Nate never seemed to recover. He was constantly starved for affection and attention and, like most moms of two young kids, I was completely touched out and tapped out. He barely saw his friends anymore, gave up his hobbies, and made me the center of his universe. It was incredibly suffocating. That, combined with being responsible for two small kids and a house full of pets was exhausting at best, and to have to handle all the financial and household decisions on top of being the breadwinner was enough to make for one cranky-ass wife.
    It became clear to me that I had lost a lot of myself over the years. I used to be funny; I used to be silly. My friends and colleagues still thought I was most of the time. But I used to know how to socialize and relax and have a good time. I even used to like sex, I think. I wanted to be with someone who was fun and who thought I was fun. Nate never thought I was fun anymore. In fact, he had reminded me many times just how unfun I was. I was too busy being everyone’s mother, including his.
    Coming back from my branch visits, I realized that I hadn’t had to make a single decision over the last 36 hours. Matt had taken care of everything. What to drink, what to eat, where to go, how to get there, he took care of me. It was glorious.
    Matt and I had talked a little bit about my marriage before. Not in depth, we were just “work friends” at that time, about nine months prior to my visit. My husband had gotten a wild hair across his ass and just decided to quit his job of 16 years with no warning, with no job to go to, in the middle of an economic downturn. I was livid. I was ready to put him right out on the street back then, but I couldn’t put him out with no job and no money. I never got over that anger.
    I remember I told Matt about it just a few days after it happened. He caught me on a really bad day and I wasn’t my normal, cheerful self. “Mal, are you okay, hon? What’s going on with you?” He made me feel instantly comfortable confiding in him. It was so easy; really, even his voice was incredibly soothing to me. He asked me thoughtful questions and seemed genuinely concerned about me. He asked if there was anything he could do to help us, suggesting he send Nate’s resume around. He knew a lot of people. I thanked him, but said that Nate had some interviews coming up and hopefully something would work out soon. I remember he told me how awesome and supportive of a wife I was. That’s pretty laughable now.
    Once I was back home from my branch visits, Matt and I began talking and texting a lot more often. Sometimes he’d skip the formality of pretending he had a work-related question, and we’d just go right into our chats about music, the latest “Mad Men” (the parallels of our developing relationship and that plot line were hard to ignore), more cooking, shopping, and especially shoes. I loved shoes. I even helped him find his Ferragamo oxfords online. For two people 14 years apart in age, we seemed to have an awful lot in common. We both shared the same brand of sardonic wit, and we loved to make others laugh. At the same time, we could launch into the nerdiest of investment or political discussions. I found him intellectually stimulating as well as just… stimulating.
    Then, one day he got up to shut his office door. He got sort of quiet and then he said what I had been waiting to hear and what I had been thinking to myself for weeks.
    “You know, Mal… I’ve been thinking. I would really like to get a chance to hang out with you again.”
    “Really?” I perked right up.
    “Yeah, we had a really good time together, didn’t we?”
    “Oh definitely! I loved being down there