I wasn’t going to let this go without getting some answers. “No, wait,” I said. “Come with me.”
To her credit, she hesitated but finally followed me. I led her to the kitchen, where Michael was sitting at the counter, eating a bowl of cereal peacefully, not having a clue about the domestic disaster that was about to happen.
She glanced at him and then turned back to me and asked, “Who’s THAT?”
Michael looked up with a spoon full of cereal in his mouth and said, “Uh… what’s going on?”
I turned back to the woman. “That’s Michael. My husband.”
Her eyebrows shot up so high I thought they might fly off her face. “That’s not Michael.”
Now it was my turn to be confused. “What?”
Michael, still looking completely lost, put down his spoon. “I feel like I should be in this conversation, but I have no idea what’s going on.”
The woman pulled out her phone and started swiping quickly through her dating app. After a few seconds, she held up a picture.
It wasn’t Michael.
It was Nick.
Michael’s younger brother. The one who always gets into trouble. The one who borrows money and never pays it back. The one who, it seems, has been using my husband’s name – and our apartment – to impress his dates.
Michael groaned. “Oh, for – now it all makes sense! Nick has been strangely interested in my schedule these past few months. He’d randomly text me to ask if I was home or if I had a work trip. I thought he was just being, you know, nosy.”
I turned back to the woman, who was now staring at Nick’s profile like it was an old relic she had just found. “Let me guess – he never let you come over when I was home?”
She shook her head, still in shock. “Yeah. Said his ‘roommate’ was always around.”
“Unbelievable,” I muttered.
Michael ran a hand through his hair. “I swear, I’m going to kill him.”
The woman – who, by now, I thought deserved a name – let out a deep breath. “I can’t believe I fell for this. I knew something was wrong with him, but I ignored the warning signs.” She sighed and held out her hand. “I’m Sonya, by the way.”
