Mood: 
:mad::mad:
When Mellissa asked me to move out I asked her the obvious question: “Is there someone else?”
She said no.
When she agreed to a trial separation we discussed whether we should consider ourselves to be on a break (a la Ross & Rachel from Friends). That set off alarm bells in the back of my head, but I was so emotionally chaotic that I ignored them. We agreed we were not on a break; no dating anyone else.
When she told me weeks later that there was no chance of reconciliation I again asked the question: is there someone else? Again she said no.
Tuesday night I was working on Mellissa’s computer when I noticed she had unread chats waiting. That caused me to remember that she mentioned her chat logs weren’t working — when she right-clicked on a name and told it to show the history it sometimes said it wasn’t set up — so I had a look at the settings. The logging was on and the folder seemed valid. I checked out the log folder and found that the chats were, in fact, being logged.
I then noticed that one of the last chats that came in was from Jake, the 22-year-old guy she said had asked her out but she hadn’t agreed yet. Jealousy filled me. I opened it up his log and jumped to the end, my shame rising as I considered what I was doing. I was moving my mouse to close the window, mentally kicking myself for being so foolish when I saw it:
Muddles/Elspeth: “I love you”
Jake: “lovey ou too”
I was stunned. I had only moved out last month and she said she hadn’t been going out on dates with this guy yet and they’re already saying they love each other? In fact, she’s saying it to him first?
I scrolled back.