Soundtrack: Must’ve Run All Day by Glassjaw.
I will never forget where I was when I got The Text: in my bright yellow (and fucking awful) kitchen in The Flat, halfway through making a cup of tea, with some weird stew bubbling away on the hob. That was my specialty back then. Anything I could whack a couple of dumplings in, to, once again, create havoc with the crispy vs. soft debate that Bestie and I always had. I’m crispy. He was soft. Weirdo.
Text
My phone pinged. It was a text message from a number that I didn’t recognised or have saved.
“Hello, you don’t know me, but I think you might be going out with my fiancé.”
At first, I thought it must’ve been a wrong number. Maybe someone was playing a prank? Who had I pissed off this time?! I must have read that line fifty times before it finally dawned on me…
The Postman.
He’d been half-in, half-out all the time, hadn’t he? Didn’t I wonder where he was all those nights? Hadn’t Bestie warned me about this exact thing? Joked about it? Hadn’t we both?
We had been together for four or five months at that point… which meant that *I* was the other woman. Well, unless he was the type to get engaged to someone in less than a month, I suppose. Heartbroken was an understatement. Bestie came home from work to find me still in a heap on the kitchen floor, sobbing my eyes out. It took about half an hour for me to stop sobbing enough to blurt out the words:
“He’s engaged.”
That fucking prick.
I’ll break his legs.
How dare he?!
From Bestie’s responses, I should’ve known that he was probably in love with me… but that’s definitely another story for another day.
I wanted to respond to The Text, but I honestly didn’t know what to say. I mean, what was I meant to say? I’m sorry for fucking your fella? I didn’t realise that he had a whole ass second life? You can have him back now, because I definitely don’t want the bastard?
Sleep On It
I was going to sleep on it as Bestie suggested, but I couldn’t. It played on my mind so much for the rest of the afternoon and evening that I burned the dumplings, ruined the weird stew, smashed a plate, and cried every thirty-five seconds if I wasn’t already crying.
“I’m so sorry.”
That’s what I eventually said to her; the fiancée that I didn’t know about, or know, or want to know, really. I couldn’t leave it, though. I was heartbroken for me, sure… but they were engaged. They were meant to be getting married. I had ruined that, and I hated myself for it. It was a real canon event for me, for sure. I had cheated, been cheated on, and been the cheatee at this stage, and they weren’t the titles I wanted to wear.
“Can we talk?” was the reply.
Absolutely not. Nope. Na-uh. Fuck off. This is your relationship; you sort it out. I’m outta here. No way. My immediate response was to ignore the texts and pretend none of it had ever happened. I’d said sorry. That had to be enough.
The next morning, though, she was the first thing I thought about when I woke up. Not him: her. I despised him… but not her.
“When are you free?” I asked.
“Café, two pm?”
The thought of her punching me in public made me want to die, so instead, stupidly, I gave her my address. If she was going to knock me out, she could do it in my living room, thank you very much.
My Living Room
Right on time, she buzzed my doorbell. I was shaking as I let her in and introduced myself, because it felt like the right and only thing to do in that moment. Katy (not her real name, obvs) was the absolute opposite of me. I was blonde and she was black; I was short and she was tall; I was slim and she was curvy.
This fucking guy really did have his cake and was happily munching away on it, huh?
We sat and talked in my kitchen as I made coffee. Katy was a lot nicer than I’d imagined, and she had no intention of knocking anyone out – “especially” me. The more we talked, the more the story got worse.
“He’s bisexual,” she explained. “He’s cheated on me with men and women, but you’re the longest one so far.”
I cringed. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. Right…?”
“God, no!”
I showed her our text messages, then she did the same. We cross-checked nights that he’d gone missing, then deduced that there must’ve been someone else occupying his time, too. Both of us felt stupid because, in hindsight, it should’ve been obvious what he’d been up to. We both cried, then hugged, then cried some more. We must’ve gone through every single emotion in the book during that meeting, and then some. Never rage or anger for each other, though. She was just like me: in love, oblivious, hopeful that things weren’t as bad as they actually were.
By the time it had gotten dark outside, we were actually friends.
The Text: The End
“Do you fancy going for a couple of drinks?” she said, before explaining her ulterior motive: a local gay pub, to see if he’d be there.
I agreed, because who doesn’t love a bit of stalking?
We spent the rest of the night drinking obscenely named cocktails, snogging, and loudly proclaiming how all men were “fucking shit,” before never speaking to each other again.
That’s just the way life goes sometimes, I guess.
The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Bunny Boiler.
Thank you so much for reading my blog today! 🖤
Would you like to read all about The Postman’s story, right from the very beginning? You’ll find that right here.
You can also read all about my disastrous dating history, right from the beginning, right here: Table of Dating Contents.
Alternatively, why not have a little peek around here: