Page 53 of Stepping Up to the Plate

• LOLA •

The next evening, I am cuddled up on Brady’s couch watching the Songbirds play the Continentals. It’s the top of the eighth and the guys are on the field. My phone buzzes and I grab it without checking who it is, assuming it is one of the girls calling about the impressive play Brady made.

“Yeah, I saw it,” I chirp. “If that split shot doesn’t move him up on the Baseball Bulges list, nothing will.”

“Is that any way to greet your husband?” an unwelcome voice sneers on the other end of the line. Fuck. It’s Phil. I should’ve peeked at the caller ID.

“What do you want?” I ask flatly. “You’re supposed to go through the lawyers if you want to talk to me.”

“I thought this conversation deserved discretion. There is no reason we can’t speak like adults. We’ve known each other for almost a decade.”

I can’t help but laugh. “No, we thought we knew each other for almost a decade, but I don’t think I ever knew you at all. I’ll ask again: What. Do. You. Want?”

“I found your little blog.Ex-Wife Files. That’s… cute.”

A lump forms in my throat. I don’t care that Phil found my blog, but I do put a lot of my innermost thoughts out there. It’s almost as if he’s read my diary. I don’t know why he thinks we need to talk about it, though. He didn’t care about my thoughts or feelings when we were married. Why does he care now?

“What about it?”

“Picture this. I’m sitting in my office when Mom calls to discuss how one of her tennis buddies was inspired to reevaluate her life after following this ‘darling’ girl on a self-discovery journey after leaving a selfish husband.” The way he says ‘darling’makes my skin crawl. I guess he disagrees with that assessment.

I scan my memory, wondering what could’ve made him angry, but I come up empty. My most recent post about how creating a gratitude practice has helped open my eyes to the good things around me. And how it allowed me to forgive myself for letting my marriage put a dark cloud over my head. I thought I’d shifted from optimist to realist due to age, but it turns out it was due to circumstance. Surely that isn’t the post he’s referencing, though. It’s more about the ritual of gratitude than my marriage.

When I don’t respond, he drones on. “Imagine Mom’s surprise and mine when it turns out the woman behind the account is you. My mother read post after post about how I neglected you, made you feel undesirable, and caused you to have a quarter life crisis. Apparently, marriage to me was akin to being a prison of war or married to a narcissistic sociopath.”

“So?” I question. He’s making big inferences into my posts, but I don’t correct him or tell him how spot on he is on that last comment. They always tell on themselves.

“So? SO?! Do you not see how embarrassing that is? What bullshit I had to spew to explain to my mother that our divorce was amicable and you were just exaggerating for clout? You need to take the posts down. I don’t want it getting around that I was a bad husband. And I certainly don’t want my mother to find out fidelity is one of the reasons we broke up. Do you really want to hurt her like that?”

“First of all,” I practically yell, “you have absolutely zero right to make any demands over what I put on my account. Those are my personal spaces to share my experiences. Second, I don’t care what you tell your mother. You’ve been lying to her for this long. I don’t know why it bothers you to do it now.

“Not that I owe you anything, but I have at no point mentioned you by name or the scene I walked in on before I left you. And newsflash, Philip, you were a bad husband!”

I can sense him fuming through the phone. “I was not a bad husband. I provided for you, put a roof over your head, made sure we always had the luxuries you wanted. I never laid a hand on you and when I had alternative sexual desires, I had those needs met elsewhere instead of asking you to debase yourself.”

“Oh, that’s what you were doing with your brother? Meeting alternative sexual desires elsewhere formybenefit? I didn’t exactly feel valued when catching you cheating on me. And as far as your other claims go, we both worked. You didn’t single handedly provide anything that I couldn’t have given myself if I were single. You can take that feather out of your cap. Also, you don’t get points fornotbeing abusive. The bar is low, but not that low.”

“Take. Down. The posts,” he snarls.

“I’m not doing that, Phil. I stopped catering to your wants when I found you tag teaming with your brother. If that’s all, I was in the middle of something.”

“This isn’t over, Lola. You created that blog while we were still married, which makes it community property. Stop any mention of me and our marriage or I’ll fight you over it in court. And I’ll claim alienation of affection to let everyone know it had been months since we’d been intimate. Is that what you want?”

“You can’t do that,” I stammer. “No one will believe you.”

“Can’t I? We hadn’t been intimate in months. You and I both know everyone will assume it’s your fault. I had no choice but to stray,” he says with a sigh.

“You really want your mom to hear that you cheated? That you and your brother were having a threesome in the office she helped decorate?”

“She doesn’t have to know the details. We both know you’d never share them. They’re as embarrassing to you as they are to me.”

“As I said at the beginning of this wretched call, we don’t know each other as well as we thought. Try me, Phil. I’m not the pathological people pleaser you married.”

“Maybe not. But I doubt you want your new man to hear all the gritty details of the end of our marriage and how you weren’t enough to meet my needs.”

It’s an empty threat, but it hits home nonetheless. I’m not worried about him telling Brady about the incident. I told him already. But I do have insecurities about being enough for him. He is much more experienced and open to new things than I am. I get the exact same dish at every restaurant we go to for Chrissake. He’s clearly noticed since he knows my order everywhere.

I don’t let Phil realize he hit a nerve. I know he’s bluffing. He would never risk his mom hearing about the affair and I’m 99 percent sure he can’t touch my blog since we were separated when I created it. The small amount of money I’ve made from it has barely covered the cost of my investment into it.

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