Page 2 of The Other Woman

Rachel didn’t fight me on any of it. She was very accommodating, in fact. Wendy was having fun playing mom to my son Kevin and griping about seeing my daughter. She’d started calling them our kids.

She’d started making harsh comments about Rachel, which I thought were unwarranted, but the one time I mentioned that, she got very irate. She seemed to think that there was something wrong with my soon-to-be ex-wife because she wasn’t putting up more of a fight. It was almost as if she wanted her to make things more difficult for us.

She’d even started claiming that Rachel was a manipulative bitch, because she never said a bad word about Wendy or the affair. She never tried to keep me from the kids, and she never interfered when our son was with us.

It seemed like the more forgiving and peaceful Rachel was, the more incensed Wendy became until I dreaded coming home to her. All of her conversations now surrounded Rachel and her life. She seemed way more interested in my ex than I was.

Then, the divorce became final, and I thought things would get better, but they only seemed to get worse. I still saw Kevin, now two days and one night during the week and Saturdays.

Wendy kept pushing the envelope, wanting more. It’s like she wanted to erase Rachel completely, dropping hints here and there that we should go for full custody, which I didn’t understand because she never wanted kids before, as far as I knew.

I put my foot down there, though, because I knew it would break Rachel. It’s when Wendy inferred that that is exactly what she was after that I started second-guessing everything.

My family was part of the problem, along with my best friend since childhood. They refused to accept my new relationship and forbade me from bringing Wendy around, even though Rachel was still welcomed with open arms.

My family always loved my ex, and that didn’t change after the divorce. She was still invited to my family home, where I was welcome to come as long as Wendy was not with me. As you can imagine, that did not go over well, and every time I went anywhere without her, it caused problems in our relationship.

Yesterday was Sarah’s first birthday, and my parents held the party at their place on the water because it’s always been the go-to place for family get-togethers. Wendy was livid and even tried to get me to keep Kevin home with us since it was our day with him.

I told her I couldn’t do that, which set her off again. I was finally able to convince her that I would only be gone for a couple of hours at most, but I couldn’t miss my daughter’s first birthday. I was already skating on thin ice with my whole family and didn’t want to rock the boat any more than we already had.

I convinced her that if we did this, it would kill any chance of my family accepting her, and that was the only thing that made her see reason. But now I wish I hadn’t gone. It was the first time we had all been together since the split.

My whole family was there to celebrate, along with some old friends, including my best friend Jacob. I hadn’t realized how close he and Rachel had become or that my son was so well acquainted with him.

Then there was the fact that my old friend group, some of whom knew me long before I met and married Rachel, seemed closer to her than when we were married. There were times when they would be talking and laughing about some shared experience that I knew nothing about and I felt like an outsider.

It's been a while since I’d spent any time with any of them because they refused to socialize with Wendy, the homewrecker, and they were not shy about calling her that to her face. But what struck me most and hurt like hell was Rachel.

She seemed so much like her old self. Happy, glowing, vivacious. I noticed that she and Jacob seemed closer, but I knew it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Neither of them would go there; I was sure of it. They had too much respect for me, and it would be too confusing, especially for my son.

When the party was over, Kevin didn’t want to leave with me; he wanted to stay with his mother and cousins, which kind of pissed me off. In the end, it was Rachel who got him to behave by promising to have his cousins over the following Sunday.

I offered to help her get Sarah into her car seat, but she put me off with a smile of thanks. Then, I watched as she allowed Jacob to help her. My daughter chortled at something he said, and I could see from that one interaction that they were well acquainted with each other.

I left there confused and hurt. I have no idea what’s going on. I spent the night sitting up in bed, wide awake, with Wendy oblivious beside me. She initiated intimacy, which I gave into, but for the first time, my heart just wasn’t in it, even if my body reciprocated.

I just couldn’t get over the way everyone had acted the day before and how they all seemed to be connected while I was the odd man out. I felt real fear for the first time since the affair began. Fear of what? I have no idea, but there’s something curdling in my gut that kept me up all night, and now I’m sitting here over my morning coffee, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In a few hours, it would be time to take Kevin back to his mother. Something I’ve been doing for months now with no problem, but for some reason, I’m counting down the hours, the hours, until I see Rachel again.

HOMEWRECKING SKANK

Itook my time with my makeup the way I always do when it’s drop-off time. I never want her to forget that he traded up. I know the bitch must be dying inside that I interrupted her happy little home, even though she pretends otherwise. Women like her make me sick.

If the man wants out, just let him go, I say. If she was doing her job, there’s no way I could’ve taken her man, so she can’t blame me. If he was happy with her, he wouldn’t have picked up what I was putting down, so I feel no guilt. I’m not the one who promised to love and cherish her after all.

I’m in a much better position now than I was two and a half years ago when we first started. Now, I don’t have to hide the man of my dreams and our relationship has been more fulfilling. He’s the best thing that has ever happened to me and everything I ever wanted in my man.

He's attentive and caring, and best of all, he chose me. I never really paid any attention to her before; I didn’t really care about her as a person. Her existence didn’t get in the way of our growing love for each other, and that’s all I cared about.

She was so stupid she didn’t even realize all those times he was right next to her texting me, or all the times we went away on ‘business’ when we were really spending about one hour a day working and the rest of the time fucking like bunnies or living our best lives together away from the pressure and stress of being caught.

I know the bitch probably got pregnant because she suspected something to try to hold onto him; he says not, but I’m a woman; we know these things. I know she’s only pretending not to care.

She thinks she’s still in the game because his family and friends chose her side, but I’m willing to wait them out because I know that with time, they’ll come around. As soon as I have our first child together, his parents are going to want to see their grandchild, and that’s going to be the thing that breaks the ice.

They may hate me all they want, but once they realize they won’t get to see my kid without me, that will be the end of this bullshit. It still burns my ass that they invite her everywhere, but I can bide my time. I waited two years to finally steal Doug away from her after all, and that worked out well.

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