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He still took the same number of out-of-town trips as he had been for years, which I never worried about because he never gave me reason to doubt him. But one of the things I had promised myself when I decided to stay was not to make myself crazy.
I wasn’t going to spend my days worrying and panicking over what they were doing behind my back. I hadn’t yet made up my mind what I was going to do with the evidence I collected, but I knew for sure that I wanted this bitch gone from our lives.
What I didn’t expect was for it to take this long for me to catch them out. Of course, I had been going out of my way to ensure they didn’t have any time to be together except at the office, which apparently they were being very careful about.
There were no instances of the two of them spending an inordinate amount of time together in his office, and there were still the texts he had sent at a time when I was sure it would’ve been impossible for him to send since he’d been in the water with me at the time it was sent.
I did learn about delayed messaging, but the context of the conversation didn’t seem to support that. That evening, I waited for him to show up at her place, but he never did, and when I checked his location on his phone, he was still at the office.
She had finally fallen asleep at some point, only to wake up a little while later and hotfoot it to the bathroom. I watched her change the sheets that she had soiled and saw the turmoil on her face as the double stench of the rotting shrimp mixed with her own bowel explosions permeated the room. She must’ve emptied two spray cans of air freshener before nightfall when Mark came home.
I didn’t let on that I knew anything, and he didn’t mention it either. We sat down to dinner with me, wondering when he was going to make his excuses to go see her. Instead, he went into his home office and stayed there for about an hour.
I was growing nervous, waiting for him to come up with an excuse, and I couldn’t help myself. I walked into his office and suggested a movie, which he agreed to without question, leaving me even more stumped.
Don’t get me wrong, there was a certain kind of high achieved each time I was able to snatch him out of her grasp by getting him to change his plans to see her, but it felt like there was something missing. I didn’t want to be the only one putting in effort. I wanted him to not even contemplate going to her.
For the next two weeks, things became even more confusing. She was growing increasingly more upset at the lack of time they spent together since I was taking up more and more of his time. I had taken to dropping in at the office out of the blue for lunch.
Nothing seemed out of place, there were no secret looks shared among the other employees the way you would expect if something was going on, but then again, from their messages, it was obvious they had gone out of their way to be careful.
I kept going over and over the messages trying to read between the lines to see what I had missed and was still no closer to understanding. If I were in her shoes, I would’ve moved on already since Mark had made it glaringly obvious that he preferred spending time with his wife.
He never seemed put out when I showed up at the office and, in fact, was always happy to see me. She kept her distance, especially once I made it clear to this assistant that no one was to interrupt us while I was there.
Because things weren’t moving fast enough to suit me, I made a bold move later the following week when Mark told me as we lay in bed that they’d just signed a very lucrative deal that had made the company hundreds of millions.
“We should throw a celebratory party.”
“You think? I was thinking of doing something but was going to have my assistant handle it.”
“No, let me.”
“You sure it’s not too much?”
“How could it be? It’s not like I have the kids to organize. No, let me do this for you, I want to.”
“Okay, I’ll leave it to you then.”
“I’ll just need to get in touch with your assistant for names and such to add to the guest list.”
“No problem, I’ll have it taken care of tomorrow.”
I actually got caught up in planning once I got in touch with the assistant, who was very helpful with what I needed. I went into party mode which is something I am very good at doing. I thought when I chose the only restaurant on the block where I had seen that embrace that it would jar Mark somehow but he didn’t even seem bothered in the least.
I’d thought of having the party at home but changed my mind because I didn’t want that bitch in my home where my family lives, so I called up the restaurant and reserved their party room. “I didn’t know you knew that place.”
“Oh? Do you know it?”
“Yeah, actually, oddly enough, I’ve had a few meetings there a couple of months ago. How did you hear about that place?”
“I saw it in passing a few months ago when I was coming back from Greenvale.”
“Oh? What were you doing there?”
“That luncheon for the animal hospital fundraiser, don’t you remember?”
“Vaguely. How is that going, by the way?”
