While doing laundry, I found a toothbrush in my husband’s suit pocket, with toothpaste on the bristles. My gut screamed cheating. But when I followed him on his next “business trip,” what I uncovered shattered more than just my trust. It erased everything.
The smell of laundry detergent mingled with the faint trace of Ethan’s sandalwood cologne rising from the navy blue suit crumpled in the hamper.
I shook out the jacket, expecting receipts, maybe a pen.
Instead, something slightly heavier dropped from the inner chest pocket. It landed on the tile floor with a soft thud.
A toothbrush. Full-sized. Adult. The bristles were stiff, smeared faintly with dried toothpaste — minty, sharp, a little too fresh.
I just stood there, staring. Heart a beat too fast. That eerie sixth sense we get when the world tilts a degree off-center? It kicked in hard.
“What the hell?” I whispered to myself.
Who carries a toothbrush in their suit jacket? There was no logical reason for a toothbrush to be in my husband’s suit pocket — unless he was brushing his teeth at someone else’s house.
Ethan was the type who thrived on routine.
He always wore the same suit and the same watch whenever he went on his same “urgent” business trips.
He was always calm and composed in a way some might have called cold. He kissed my forehead when he came home, like that, too, was just another part of the routine.
No “I love you.” No lingering touch. Just practical concerns from a practical man. And I loved that about him, but now… maybe what I’d always accepted as unruffled practicality was something colder, after all.
I picked up the toothbrush and stared at it.
Last week, I’d brought up having a baby again. I wasn’t getting any younger, and we’d been married for four years already.
“We can’t have a baby until we’re financially stable,” he’d said, voice low and reasonable. “Maybe in another year or two.”
Always another year, another excuse. Always working late hours and traveling long distances to get the promotion or the pay rise, and yet it was never enough to consider us financially stable enough for a baby.
I tapped the toothbrush against my palm, thinking.
And the one thought I kept coming back to was that Ethan was having an affair. The long hours, the routine affection, the excuses, the toothbrush… it all seemed to add up.
I didn’t confront him — not yet. I needed more than mint-scented suspicion.
When he said he had another late night at the office, I kissed him goodbye and watched him pull out of the driveway.
Then I grabbed my keys and followed.
Have you ever done something you never thought you’d do? Something straight out of a movie you’d roll your eyes at?
Yeah, that was me: stalking my husband with shaking hands and a churning stomach.
I followed in my car, hands clenching the wheel. My chest tightened with dread when I realized he wasn’t heading to his office.