Then, unable to contain my rage, I slapped him and threw a Rubik’s cube in his direction, which he dodged. To this day, every time I see a Rubik’s cube it triggers me, pulling me right back to this incredibly dark moment in my life. Same goes for any mention of an F45 gym.
Brock didn’t know what to say. What could he possibly say? He’d done what he’d done, and it wasn’t going to go away or be swept under the rug. Still, I wanted details. I had to know who the woman was and why he’d so blatantly betrayed me, particularly during such a vulnerable period of my life.
He said that the woman was someone he had known since before we met. One day, while I was at home, pregnant with his child, Brock went to work at his gym, F45 Training East Hillcrest in San Diego, and he ran into her outside. After reconnecting, he said they began a brief affair.
I was a little confused because I’d always had his location and could have checked it at any time. How had I not caught them? But he also had a second phone for work, which I did know about but didn’t monitor. It turned out that was their sole form of communication. Nice, right?
That same night Brock gave me a letter that he’d written a year after the affair ended. Why then? I wondered. Apparently, he had compartmentalized his indiscretion (convenient, I know), but while we were out at a local festival in San Diego one night, he ran into some old friends who reminded him of that time in his life, and everything that he’d done came rushing back. He said he realized he was throwing his second chance at a family away by stepping out and swore to himself that he would never betray me again.
That night after the festival, he wrote the letter, which included more specifics than I ever wanted, such as how many times they’d slept together, where they’d done it, and where they hadn’t (our house). He also pointed out that it was purely physical, never emotional, and he always used protection. Gee, thanks! He definitely wasn’t sober when he put pen to paper, so the spelling errors were rampant. I can’t explain why, but that really irritated me. Maybe because it felt like another sign of his carelessness.
The letter made me remember the weeks leading up to my second trimester when, like many pregnant women, I was sexually stimulated. I’ll never forget how, during that time, Brock was “afraid” to have sex with me (or he simply didn’t want to). That did a number on my anxiety, and it killed my confidence in a way I can’t even describe. His behavior now made so much more sense.
Once I’d read it, that was more than enough. I told him to immediately toss it into the fire. I never wanted to set eyes on those words again.