My husband invited his ex-girlfriend to our housewarming party and made one thing perfectly clear: if I could not handle seeing her in our home, I was free to leave.
So I gave him the calmest, most “mature” response of my life.
That night, I was sitting on the kitchen floor of our tiny Brooklyn apartment, halfway under the sink and trying to repair a leaking pipe. My hair was tied back, my jeans were stained from work, and I still had a wrench in my hand when the front door suddenly slammed hard enough to rattle the picture frames.
I slowly slid out from beneath the cabinet.
My husband was standing in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. He had the expression of a boss preparing to discipline an employee rather than a husband coming home to his wife.
“We need to talk about Saturday,” he said.
Saturday was our housewarming party.
It was supposed to be our first real celebration since moving in together, a chance to invite friends over, open a few bottles of wine and enjoy what we had built.
“What about it?” I asked, wiping my hands with an old rag.
He straightened.
“I invited someone,” he said. “She matters to me. I need you to handle it calmly and maturely. If you can’t, then we’re going to have a major problem.”
I looked at him.
“Who?”
“Jessica.”
His ex.
The woman he always seemed to have an excuse for. The woman he still followed on every social media app because, according to him, “blocking people is childish.”
