I remember the particular dread of that conversation, waiting until she’d finished her coffee, understanding whatever I said next would fundamentally alter whatever remained of our relationship, regardless of how carefully I chose my words. She sat quietly at first, listening without interrupting, her expression shifting gradually from confusion into something considerably darker as the full picture became clear.
“Your wife is a flight attendant,” I told her. “She was working our flight yesterday. She already knew about us before we ever boarded that plane.”
Selene’s reaction surprised me, her own composure cracking considerably more visibly than Naomi’s had throughout the entire devastating flight.
“You told me your marriage was already essentially over,” she said, her voice rising with genuine anger. “You told me you were planning to file for divorce regardless of whether we were together, that you’d already made peace with it emotionally, that it was only a matter of paperwork and timing at that point.”
“I was planning to,” I said, though even as I spoke the words, I understood how hollow they actually sounded given everything that had just happened, understanding I’d been telling her exactly what she wanted to hear rather than any genuine, concrete plan I’d actually put into motion.
“Were you?” Selene asked. “Or were you just planning to keep having both, for as long as you could possibly manage it, string me along indefinitely while never actually risking the comfortable life you’d already built with her?”
I didn’t have a genuine answer for that particular question, understanding, with considerable shame, exactly how accurate her assessment actually was, understanding that some quiet, cowardly part of me probably had, in fact, been hoping to somehow keep both lives running indefinitely without ever needing to choose.
Our relationship, whatever it had actually been throughout those eighteen months, effectively ended during that difficult conversation in our Verlaine hotel room, Selene packing her own bags and booking a separate return flight before our originally planned trip had even reached its second day.
I stood in that hotel room afterward, alone, staring at the untouched view of the city we’d been so excited to explore together only days earlier, understanding, with sudden and complete clarity, exactly how thoroughly my carefully constructed secondary life had just collapsed entirely. I ordered room service that evening, unable to face a restaurant alone, eating in silence while replaying every choice that had led me to that exact, isolated moment.
I returned to Bellmoor alone three days later, understanding that whatever conversation awaited me with Naomi would likely determine the entire remaining trajectory of my adult life.
Naomi met me at our house, calm and composed in a way that had become considerably more unsettling than any anger could have been.
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