An unpleasantly familiar email header barged over my swiping.
I rolled my eyes, and took a long drag of my weed pen. The sun was ambling down westwards in the backyard of my marital apartment building, but it wasn’t quite evening yet. Shadows from the tree branches overhead fell across my lap in the lawn chair. Over by the fence, a spider was spinning up a massive web blocking off access to the alley.
“Our Shared Home,” the alert read, covering up Aaron’s cute profile photo in Tinder. Karen had taken off the day after the election, on that fucking trip to Montreal she’d meant as an olive branch. She hadn’t returned since, and I had no idea where she was living. Instead, she messaged a rapid fire of pointless demands, obnoxious questions, and toothless ultimatums. Apparently 5:27PM on a Monday was time for my regular update of divorce crazy.
Did I really want to open that email now? Aaron was a hot younger musician up in Lincoln Square with a dashing beard and a mouth watering jawline. We were just about to negotiate a meetup. It wasn’t like Karen had anything time sensitive to rant about.
…except “someone” had definitely entered the apartment several times since Karen’s return to Chicago. A disposable vape had gone missing. The condoms were in a different place on my nightstand. The car’s toll pass had vanished from its dashboard, then reappeared a day after that.
God damn it. I should probably just read it and see if Karen had some sort of plan. Fine. Flirting with Aaron was also not strictly time sensitive.
I pulled up the email and Jesus Christ fucked on a school bus:
“I do want the crème couch for sure, so please don’t have sex on it with anyone. Do NOT set this outside; I have no home for the time being. I would also hope that since I paid rent there this month you would be respectful and not have tons of strangers in our apartment…”
So after calling her father on speakerphone to declare I was a disgusting gay pervert, fucking off to who knew where, and skulking through my stuff while I was off with my kids, that miserable sexless frump I unfortunately married had thoughts about how I was getting laid!?
To hell with that. I flicked Tinder back up and started tapping out a message to Aaron.
That hot musical 30 year old was in for a treat tonight.
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