Page 37 of Unbossly Manners

“I’m still alive.” He raised his arms above his head then dropped them to the armrest. “Kat’s coming by with Evie in a bit to say goodbye.”

I licked mayonnaise off my finger. “Didn’t you see them last night? I thought Kat was with you and Evie most of the night.”

“No.” Jackson lost the levity in his voice. “She wasn’t with me.”

“I thought Devan was already in India?” I leaned back crumpling the paper my sandwich had been wrapped in.

The muscles in his face tensed. “He is.”

I knew I should leave it, but… “Was she with another guy?”

“Who knows.” He breathed out, exasperated. “She has an open relationship, so… anything’s possible.”

“Did she want an open relationship with you?” I asked.

“It never came up.” He cleared his throat. “I think she knew I wouldn’t be up for it.”

“Kat said she cheated.”

His hand rubbed the back of his neck and he breathed in deeply. “It’s hard to blame her. It was the last straw.”

I tucked my foot under my thigh. Jackson never said anything bad about Kat. He never got angry. “How so?”

“She’d been telling me for a long time that she wasn’t happy. We married young because she got pregnant in college. We were in love, so we figured we’d just start our family earlier than we’d planned. A lot earlier. It was hard, but we made it work. Which meant she gave up her dream of being a therapist and I worked while she took care of the baby.” Jackson closed his eyes. “Her life became centered around Evie, which was necessary but it was also challenging. Kat lost her identity. And she was depressed. She’d never graduated college or had a career, and she was ambitious. When Evie started middle school, Kat went back to school, got her degree, then began to volunteer at an organization that helped procure and distribute supplies for victims of natural disasters. A fire lit in her belly again, but she lost that fire for me and the life we had.”

I couldn’t imagine being married in college. I had no idea who I was back then. Hell, I was still figuring it out.

“Did she talk to you about her struggles while you were married?” I asked.

“All the time, but I brushed them off. I told her it’s how all women feel after becoming a mother. Pretty insensitive of me, I know. Then she met Devan. He listened to her and he was a doctor who traveled the world fixing broken children. For the first time in over a decade, Kat felt alive again. And I wasn’t there. I was too busy climbing the corporate ladder. When I finally noticed, it was too late. She’d fallen in love with her new life, this new man, and I wasn’t part of it.”

“When did you find out that she’d cheated?”

Jackson rubbed his eyes.

“The texts. She used to sit on the couch and giggle when she got them. She never hid anything from me. She’d read me the texts sometimes. It was silly stuff. A little flirty, but they were only friends at that point. You’ve met Kat. She’s got a big personality and she’s flirty with lots of her friends. But it was the smile she got on her face when she received one of Devan’s texts. Then one day we were having sex—which we hardly did at that point—and she started crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she was in love with someone else.”

“Damn. That’s harsh.” My chest ached.

“Yeah. Brutal. They hadn’t even consummated anything. Kat cheated emotionally, and the moment she realized it, she told me. Literally. It hit her like a ton of bricks when she was fucking me, and she stopped that moment and confessed.” He swallowed, and took a deep breath, gathering his emotions. “That’s the kind of person she is.”

Only a man still unequivocally in love could speak kindly of his wife admitting she was in love with another man while in bed with him.

“That couldn’t have been the first time she realized it,” I pressed.

“It was. And it was brave to admit it. I’d been so absent. I’m not saying it was right, but it’s complicated.” Anger tinged his voice. Not for her, but for my questioning.

“It’s old news,” he said, refocusing. “In the end, Evie’s happiness is what matters. It was hard for her at first, realizing her mom and I were breaking up, but she’s on the other side of it now. It turned out to be an invaluable life lesson for Evie. She knows that the worst can happen to her, and not only will she survive it, but her life can be better for it.”

“How much Glennon Doyle have you been reading?” I joked.

That broke the tension and he chuckled.

“It’s Evie’s favorite podcast. She made me listen to it. I know she’s a little young, but I was impressed that she saw the parallels. Plus, how awesome is it that a woman like that is already her role model.”

Glennon Doyle was a badass, but I wondered if all was as happy and healthy as Jackson made it out to be. Kat and Evie may have dealt with everything pertaining to this breakup, but Jackson hadn’t.

The intercom buzzed to life on Jackson’s desk phone.

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