“Nothing has changed, Lina,” Phil said, following her into the house. “I had an affair—you knew that. You’ve been punishing me for it for four months.”

“Punishing you?” she spit out, turning to him. “Punishing you? The only person being punished is me! Every time I think of those texts or the fact there is another woman walking around with your baby inside her!” She looked him up and down. “I don’t even know you.”

“You don’t know me?” he repeated, his hands clenched at his sides. “I’m the same man that made love to you this morning,” he snarled. “Tell me what I’ve done in the last four hours?”

“You’ve become a stranger to me,” she said. “Because the man I thought you were wouldn’t have stopped running with his daughter every Saturday so he could see the woman he was already screwing Monday through Friday. You weren’t just cheating on me. You were cheating on your children.”

“Fuck!” He slammed his hands down on the counter. “So what, now we’re back to ground zero? You have to get over it all over again?”

“I don’t know.” She stared at him, imagining him showing up with Kim as a couple to a running group every week. “Maybe I won’t be able to get over it at all.”

“What does that mean?” All the anger seemed to evaporate from his body. “What are you saying, Lina?”

“I’m saying what I feel.”

He curved one of his hands around the back of his neck. “I made a mistake. One huge fucking mistake. Why can’t you just forgive me?”

When Lina drove away from her house, leaving Phil with the boys, she didn’t consciously think she had a destination in mind, but when she found herself sitting on the patio of Nick’s Mexican restaurant, sipping a margarita and eating from a basket of tortilla chips, she knew she had planned to come to him all along.

The only problem was he wasn’t responding to her texts. Over the course of two margaritas, she’d sent him three.

I’m sorry.

I hope everything is okay with Emily.

I wish you would text me back.

She ordered a third margarita and fajitas. When her phone dinged her heart skipped, but it was Phil, not Nick. I’m sorry. I love you, baby. Come home.

I need space, she texted back.

Where are you?

Drinking. Leave me alone.

A few minutes later her phone rang, and she glanced at the display expecting to see Phil, but instead Adele was the caller. “Phil’s worried about you.”

“He should be,” she said and then spent the next ten minutes telling her about the altercation in front of her house. “I’m in Baltimore,” she admitted when Adele asked her for the third time. “I’m drinking margaritas and texting Nick, but he’s ignoring me.”