Stories

My Ex-Husband Mocked Me for Bringing a Date to His Halloween Party, Saying ‘No Man Would Ever Date Someone Like…

AQBy Avery QuinnNovember 2, 202621 min read

Christy spun toward her. “I was protecting my son.”

Daniel shook his head slowly. “Telling Oliver I don’t want to see him isn’t protecting him.”

Nobody argued with him.

Christy looked around the room for an ally. Bonnie and Clyde studied their drinks. The man in the gorilla suit took off his head and suddenly found the ceiling fascinating.

Jason lowered the phone. “You lied to me about him.”

“Jason, please.”

“You said he didn’t care about Oliver. You said he just left.”

Christy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Can we not do this here?”

Jason turned toward me then, his face red to the ears. Whether it was shame or anger, I honestly couldn’t tell. “You brought him here to humiliate us, didn’t you?”

For one second, the old instinct rose in my throat: apologize, explain, keep talking until he stopped looking at me like that. Then I thought of Ava in the doorway with her glow stick. And I remembered how Jason had always needed someone else to hold the blame, so he never had to.

“No, Jason. I came because our children asked me to.”

He opened his mouth. I kept going.

“You made fun of me for coming alone. Then you mocked me for showing up with someone. And now, after all that, you think I’m here for some petty revenge?” I could feel the stars at the corners of my eyes, as if Ava’s pencil were still on my skin. “I don’t need your approval to come to my children’s party, and I won’t apologize for moving on. Who I move on with is none of your business.”

He stared at me. This time, I didn’t look away.

Christy clapped her hands twice, loud and sharp. “Party’s over. Everybody out.”

“No,” I said. “The children haven’t done anything wrong. Let them finish Halloween.”

Jason glanced out the back window, where three small heads were bobbing through the hay bales and Ben’s laugh carried all the way to the kitchen.

“They can finish the last game,” he said quietly.

Christy stared at him. “You’re taking her side?”

“I’m thinking about the kids.”

Daniel slid his phone back into his jacket. “We’ll handle the missed visits through our lawyers and the parenting coordinator,” he told Christy evenly. “Not here.”

She turned away without a word.

The last game was a costume parade around the patio, and it was awkward in every possible way, but Ava won a bag of candy for “Most Magical,” and Ben marched out of the maze announcing to anyone who would listen that he hadn’t cried once. “I screamed one time,” he clarified. “Screaming isn’t crying.”

When it was over, I gathered jackets and candy bags. Oliver clung to Daniel’s waist, already asking when they’d see each other again.

“Soon, buddy,” Daniel promised. “I mean it.”

At the front door, Jason stopped me. He didn’t quite meet my eyes. “Sarah. What I said earlier. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No,” I said. “You shouldn’t have.”

I didn’t tell him it was okay. I took Ben’s hand and walked out to the car.

On the drive home, Ava leaned forward between the seats. “Why did everybody get so quiet?”

“The grown-ups had a disagreement,” I said. “But none of you did anything wrong. Not one thing.”

She thought about that, then sat back, and I watched in the rearview mirror as her shoulders finally came down from around her ears.

Ben kicked the back of my seat. “Is Daniel coming over again?”

I looked at Daniel. He was smiling, his eyes on the road, the silver mask resting in his lap.

“I hope so,” he said.

Three weeks later, he called me from his car in a school parking lot to tell me that both visits he’d scheduled through the parenting coordinator had actually happened. The first was pizza and a movie. The second was a trip to the science center, where Oliver had explained potato batteries to a total stranger for twenty minutes.

“He asked if you could come next time,” Daniel said. “Ava and Ben too.”

We were still seeing each other by then, though neither of us had said out loud what we were. One Friday in late November, after dinner at a little Thai place on Fifth Avenue, he walked me to my door.

Ben’s pumpkin was still on the porch, slumping now, its three marker teeth sagging into a lopsided grin. I’d never had the heart to throw it out.

Daniel kissed me under the porch light. Then he pulled back and raised an eyebrow. “So. Are we a thing now?”

I laughed. “I think it’s about time we both get to have a good relationship.”

Inside, I could hear the kids arguing over the TV remote, perfectly ordinary and perfectly loud. Jason had said that nobody expected me to have anyone.

He was right. Nobody did. Least of all me.

Would you have walked into your ex’s party with your head held high, or would you have stayed home?

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction inspired by real-life themes. Names, characters, places and events are fictionalized, and any resemblance to real persons is purely coincidental. Images are for illustration purposes only.