Missing Like You

ELEVEN

SCOTT DONOVAN
SATURDAY JUNE 18, 2022

After the press conference, I head back to Jake's place where I sequester myself away for the remainder of the evening, hiding from the press. They won't fucking leave me alone, continuously asking me if I did something to Isabelle. Detective Gibbons praised me for my little spiel on television, but apparently other people think otherwise. They're saying I look cold and calculated, that my mind is separated from my emotions. I don't even know what that means. I know I've always been a little disassociated from things. I'm not as emotional or sensitive as Isabelle. She wears her heart on her sleeve and lets everyone knows how she's feeling, an open book. But me on the other hand? You can't get into my mind with a sledgehammer.

Maybe that's why we started having problems. Maybe that's one of the reasons why our marriage fell apart. I can't blame her for anything, it was all my fault. And not just the affair – everything that came before that.

I blame it on the fact that we were so young when we got married. All of our friends went out and experimented with different people, different genders, doing whatever they wanted after high school. That life never appealed to me because I had Isabelle. She was all I ever had, and she was all I ever needed. I was never tempted by other women. I could be out at a club with my friends, and they'd be hitting on elegant women in cocktail dresses with their tits half out. But my eyes never wandered. My brain never thought, what if. I never succumbed to the bachelor life, wondering what things would be like if I didn't have Isabelle. Until it did start to wander, that is.

It was after the miscarriage. Everything changed after that. I'm not blaming Isabelle for her thoughts or behavior during this time, but she changed. She was no longer the same down-to-earth, bubbly and enthusiastic girl I had always known and loved. She got quieter. She stopped smiling as much. It was like she became a shell of herself, an outline of the person she used to be. And it made me fucking depressed seeing her like that. All I wanted to do was scoop her up and kiss her to make it better. I wanted to take her to the bedroom and make her forget all of her sadness. If we could just get pregnant again, then I'd show her how happy we could be. That was my plan, I suppose. To get Isabelle pregnant. To start a family. To be a proper husband to my wife. But Isabelle wasn't on the same page as me. She got angry with me, accused me of being too happy after our loss. She didn't like when I'd try to initiate sex with the sole purpose of procreation in mind. We'd make love, but it wasn't the same. I found out a few months later that she was on the pill again. I was furious. We had a huge fight that night and she packed a bag and stayed at Kate's.

We spent the next few weeks after that trying to rebuild what was broken. I tried to be the loving, consoling husband that she needed, but she wouldn't let me in. She told me that we were only twenty-five. We'd still have plenty of time to have children. "My parents were thirty when they had me," she reminded me. Yes, I thought, and also had two miscarriages prior to you.

I guess in her mind, she was done trying for the time being. I mean, we never really intended to start a family at twenty-five anyways. The pregnancy had been an accident. A happy accident, nonetheless. Isabelle told me that everything happens for a reason. "Perhaps we weren't meant to start a family yet," she said to me. I got mad at her for suggesting that the loss of our child happened for a reason. Again, another fight ensued, and it seemed that my wife and I would never quite be on the same page ever again.

It happened shortly after that. It had been almost a year since the miscarriage. We were both twenty-six, but things still weren't the same between us. So much fighting and division between two people can truly be damaging. I was driving home from work one evening listening to the radio. The hosts were talking about the dating site Lenora Valentine. If you don't know what that is, it's a dating site directly geared towards people who are married or in relationships. Infidelity at its finest. I'm not sure why this site even existed in the first place. I guess Lenora or whatever the hell her name is decided that she wasn't fulfilled in her marriage and thought it would be a good idea to start a dating site so other people could cheat on their spouses as well.

The radio hosts were relaying statistics on which cities in America had the highest Lenora Valentine users. I was surprised when I heard that Philadelphia was third on the list. Were there really that many unhappy marriages around me? That many people going out and cheating on their husbands and wives? I changed the station and listened to music instead, trying to push thoughts of the website out of my mind. But Lenora Valentine, she's relentless. Thoughts of the site followed me home, into the shower, along with me into my bed that night. I stared at the ceiling, my sleeping wife next to me, wondering what all the hype was about. We'd been together nine years and never once did I consider cheating on her or being intimate with another woman. But for the first time since we were sixteen, I actually considered it.

I blame Lenora Valentine and hold her entirely responsible.

A few days later, when I was at work, curiosity got the better of me and I went onto the website. It was very appealing, visually, I must admit that. White and pink themed, and the header was front and center with its tagline underneath. LENORA VALENTINE: Life is short. Have an affair.

As I scrolled through the website, I learned more about its inception. LV was created for married people to have affairs, as it so blatantly put it. But it wasn't limited to just that. The site was for anyone, married, single, polygamous. As long as you were okay with knowing what your potential match's relationship status entailed, then you were good to go. The site also stressed privacy and discretion and ensured secure logins as well as never asking for personal information. Right there on the screen in front of me were the words create an account. I clicked it without hesitation.