The Other Other Woman by Mallory Lockhart Read Free Book Online Page B

me or worse, telling them I was soulless, compassionless and inhumane. We had a lot of couples friends in our neighborhood, people we had basically raised our children with, and I didn’t want to tell them what was going on between us just yet. But I knew I could confide in Brady.

Chapter Three
    I met Brady at my children’s daycare. He was a teacher in the room with the school-agers. I would see him walking around. You usually notice a male teacher because it’s not something you see very often in daycare. I would always nod or smile, but it wasn’t until my oldest went to Pre-K at the elementary school that I really spoke to him. I liked him instantly. I could tell right away that under that overly enthusiastic “HEY LET’S SIT IN THE YELLOW CIRCLE!” voice, he was every bit as jaded and sarcastic as I was. He was a total cutie-pie too, although I knew right away that he was gay. He was not especially tall but had lovely blue eyes and a very genuine smile. He almost always wore black, head to toe, and he had a shaved head that he covered with a gray newsboy cap.
    He had a gift for calming people. He was always very cool and collected with a very soothing nature. He could calm the “helicopter” parents down when they would get upset because their little poopsie had a tantrum over the building blocks. And then he would lean over to me as if to say, “Are you believing this shit?” I would stifle my laughter until they left and he would say, “Good grief, lady, UNCLENCH!” I loved that he saw me as one of those “cool” moms.
    We often talked about running and home renovation since it turned out he lived right in the same neighborhood as me in a house that needed about as much repair. I gave him some home renovation catalogs and he gave me his iPod so I could steal his running playlists. We ended up becoming Facebook friends soon after, and since we both have a major love of coffee started texting and meeting at Starbucks once in a while just to chat. This made my husband pretty uncomfortable. Not because Brady was gay, but because he probably knew I was telling him how unhappy I was at home.
    Brady knew of Nate but didn’t have much contact with him since he worked the afternoon shift. He knew that Nate had quit his job, thinking it would spur him into finding one much better. But our situation worsened as there were very few jobs out there for someone with no skills other than those that were considered hobbies to most employers. I often told Brady that I was frustrated with Nate’s lack of forward propulsion, and that I didn’t know if I wanted him depending on me for the rest of my life. Brady offered to ask a couple of his friends if they knew of anything in the art industry that Nate might be suited for. But of course, in the middle of a recession, there was nothing available.
    Brady was actually able to find a new job with a Director’s title, though, so he left our daycare. We continued our Starbucks chats and went out to dinner every few weeks as well. I had only ever mentioned Matt to Brady once before, that I had this broker “friend” who seemed to be flirting with me and that he was pretty easy on the eyes. That was right after my branch visit in April. It was all very black and white to him, however, and he gave me the “He’s married. You’re married. He’s a douche for even texting you… Don’t even go there” speech. So I didn’t mention it again and quickly changed the subject.
    He had just recently met a new boy named Justin that he was very excited about. Justin was tall and blonde and totally adorable, a little younger than Brady, maybe 27 or so. Brady showed me his pictures, and we gushed about him instead. Then we hatched a plan to get a bunch of our mom friends together with him and his gay friends for a night of dancing up at our local lesbian bar within the next month or two.
     
    The next time I talked to Brady, however, I was in a bit of a panic. I texted him to see