The GIRL with whom I share my Husband

Today, I met the girl who is sleeping with my husband. I do not know if I should call her woman or girl. She is so tiny. She is a tall tiny thing. But she is so beautiful. She has very nice long hair. I ran my hands through it, just to be sure. It was all real. I wanted to pull out my human hair weave right then. She thought she would be meeting my husband. When she saw me walk to her table she did not flinch even a second. She looked into my eyes and smiled. There was no fear in her eyes. Only calm and her face shone with compassion, or was that pity I saw? She stood up and pulled back my seat for me.

This is not exactly how I had figured our little meeting would start. You see I had made all plans for this meeting pretending to be my husband. I had deleted all the texts and cleared the text log. She started the conversation. My anger faded and I was so confused, I did not feel hatred. For a moment there I caught myself admiring her gut. Even at her age back then, over twenty years ago when my dear husband was head over heels in love with me, I did not look half as good or as confident as this young lady who was making all my fore-planned thoroughly rehearsed speech slip away so easily through my fingers. She had an amazing easiness about her. She listened without a tinge of expression on her beautiful long face, as I hissed insults at her and her generation not forgetting whoever brought her up.

When I could not continue because I fell into a bout of dry unending coughing, she politely asked the waiter to bring me water. When I was back to myself I continued where I had left. She sat there, respectfully. Same as she had been before. Who on earth taught her to do that? I would have physically assaulted anyone who even dared to utter any one of the things I was telling her.  When I felt lighter and better about myself, I stopped. Then she asked if I wanted to order! The audacity! I wanted to spread her tiny self across the table and whip her as I would my daughters when they were young and nobody frowned upon corporal punishment.

She opened her mouth, the third time that whole time. It was an hour and half of my livid monologue. She spoke fluent English, calmly. Her voice was devoid of emotion. Her face was convincing. Her eyes were genuine. This girl, my daughter’s age, was acting as if she were my age mate and she was doing nothing wrong having a clandestine affair with a married family man. She had known it was I she was going to meet for that was never how they had been making plans.She asserted. She had been with my husband for the past four years.  She claimed that was not how my husband texted if he ever did.  That supposedly wasn’t also a place my husband would pick. She did not agree with me about how I felt she was wasting her life.

She claimed her man had never in the four years going five asked her to go wait at a hotel. I did not want more. I wanted her to stop. She did not. She wondered how I had just now found out. They had always been careful. She keeps his family diary and makes sure he does not miss out on any important days or events. It dawned on me how well she knew him. This stranger knew my family like the back of her clean hands. She spoke about them with love in her face and voice. The way my husband would. She would stop and wait for me to finish my rude interruption. Then she would continue as though she had just taken a water break and was going on.

This girl was good. You probably think very little of me at this point but at that moment, looking at her, I understood why my husband had picked her. Actually they hadn’t made a mistake. I had for the first time in my twenty-six years of a happy marriage decided to snoop. The father of my children and I had never felt the need to monitor another’s phone activities. The trending sponsor debate on social media pushed me there.  She had a two-year old son, the spitting image of his handsome father. She was not interested in marriage. She was happy and comfortable. Before her, my husband had never strayed. When he met her he did. My husband is a sponsor. I said that to her. She smiled took my hand into hers and said she was not breaking my family.

When I look back, these five years have been nothing but wonderful. I asked her to stay wherever hidden place she had been all along. As if I wasn’t the one who had smoked her out. I made her promise to keep our little adventure to herself.  I went home and made my husband his favorite meal. Then I sat and waited for him to get back home to me…