The Other Woman

We’ve all read the story before. The mistress. The homewrecker. The other woman who smiles a little too long at someone else’s husband, who plays dirty, who knows exactly what she’s doing and does it anyway. She’s the villain of a hundred novels, the cautionary tale, the woman we’re taught to hate before we even know her name.

I wanted to write something different.

Because sometimes it isn’t like that at all. Sometimes two people meet at exactly the wrong time, and neither of them asked for it, and neither of them crosses a single line while there’s still a line to cross.

Sometimes a marriage doesn’t end because of betrayal but it ends because two people simply, quietly, honestly fall out of being what the other one needs while somewhere in the middle of that ending, someone new walks in, unaware and unintentional, in the same orbit as a man still working out who he used to be.

This is that story. It’s messy, and it’s honest, and I don’t think anyone in it is entirely right or entirely wrong.

I hope you find something familiar in it, even if the shape of it is unlike the stories you’re used to. Thank you for reading.

Luca Sky