To understand where all this began, you first have to understand why it began. See, Jack was always a good person: friendly, caring, loyal. There wasn’t a person on this earth he thought of as beneath him. Imagine somebody who empties his pockets to every homeless person he sees. Picture the cliché of someone who helps old ladies cross the street. That was him.
He was like that as a boyfriend, too. Whenever I felt blue, he’d turn up at my place with flowers and a bottle of wine, and he’d take the evening off to be with me. If there was something that needed fixing, he was on it like a fly on shit. He was everything I wanted. I don’t want to say “until death do us part”, but if I had a thousand lifetimes, I’d want them all to be with Jack. Isn’t that what soulmates should share? Love that lives on past these mortal bones?
Through sicknesses and life’s ups and downs, we supported one another. In the rough times, neither of us strayed. We’d walk through the neighborhood arm in arm, just concentrating on us.
It was the perfect relationship, really, and anyone looking in from the outside would say the same.
So, imagine my surprise when he came home stinking of a woman’s perfume.
I’m not the jealous type. Never have been. But when blatant evidence looks you in the eye, you have to be a fool to look away, right? I tried questioning him about it, but all he did was hold my flailing arms gently and tell me I was being irrational. He said he only had eyes for me and that he’d never do anything to jeopardize what we had. He said I was being paranoid. Perhaps I was—I spent the next few nights lying awake and trying to process it logically. The darkened ceiling above me didn’t help, nor did it give me any clarity. I’d wake each morning as confused as I was when I’d gone to bed. It was like my mind was spinning as fast as a centrifuge. Should I follow him? Should I go through his things? Or should I let it drop? Every option seemed as absurd as the one that preceded it.
Eventually, I reached the conclusion that I’d blown things out of proportion.
After all, he works around women all day long. The law firm he works for has around sixty employees, and to the best of my knowledge, two-thirds of those are female. Now, I’m a woman—obviously—so I know what I’m talking about when I say that those hoity-toity career women shower in perfume. And none of the cheap stuff, either, that you can pick up from the bargain shelves of your local Target. With this in mind, combined with the fact Jack spent all day surrounded by them, wasn’t it perfectly logical to assume some of those scents had just naturally rubbed off the women and onto him? That some may have sprayed themselves with more at work just as Jack was passing, and his clothes had picked up some of the mist floating in the air?
My apology to Jack came the next day, and he accepted it like a gentleman. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t call me psycho or fruitcake. He just smiled, hugged me, and told me that he loved me. He told me he understood why I would react in such a way, and that although he’d appreciate it if I kept such paranoia to myself in the future, he thought it was perfectly reasonable for me to suspect something on such an occasion. We kissed, made up, and that was that.
It wasn’t until days later that another thought occurred to me. Yeah, I know, I said I’d dropped the whole crazy notion and moved on. We’d moved on.
But if he worked with those women every day, why was he only now smelling like that?
Deep down, I thought I knew the answer. I didn’t want to be the jealous woman who always accuses her man of cheating, but I spent a lot of sleepless nights wondering what exactly was going on. Eventually, I had to just grow up and let it go.
But why am I telling you this? Well, that’s simple: to show you that Jack is a reasonable man who likes to see things objectively. He’s also very aware of the human condition, so if someone is acting out, he likes to know why. Evidence of that goes way back to our early days, but I’ll get to that. For now, let me just say that I was within my rights to suspect something.
Because later, I discovered that the perfume belonged to Kris DeCarles.
It’s probably not what you think. Let me guess—he’d been having an affair? That was my first reaction, of course, but it goes far deeper than that. Jack is a man of pride, after all, and as soon as I realized that, I discovered how ridiculous my accusation was. He wouldn’t cheat on his girlfriend. That much was certain. But did that mean Kris wasn’t involved?
Well, that’s another story altogether…