I always thought if I caught him cheating, it would be through a text message or a stray lipstick mark. I never thought it would be a handwritten log of his illicit trysts.
I was cleaning off the coffee table when I found it. His black Moleskine notebook was open. I glanced at the page, and the blood drained from my face.
I found a list of dates and times in my boyfriend’s notebook under the name “Sasha.”.
Sasha. The name sounded exotic. Dangerous. Beautiful. And the schedule was rigorous. Sasha: 8:00 AM. Sasha: 7:00 PM. Sasha: Saturday Morning. He was seeing her constantly. He was obsessed with her.
I didn’t wait for him to come home. I waited for him to walk through the door so I could ambush him. When he finally arrived, smiling like he hadn’t just destroyed my life, I snapped.
I confronted him, throwing the book at his chest, demanding to know who she was.
“Who is she?” I screamed. “Who is Sasha? And why do you need to see her twice a day?”
He looked confused. He picked up the notebook from the floor, dusted it off, and looked at the page I had aggressively dog-eared.
Then, he started laughing. He wasn’t nervous; he was amused. This enraged me further.
“It’s funny to you?” I hissed. “Our relationship is a joke?”
“Babe,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “‘Sasha is my sourdough starter.’“.
I stopped breathing. “Your… what?”
“My starter. The one in the jar on the fridge? ‘Those are feeding times.’“.
I walked to the kitchen. There she was. A crusty, glass jar filled with bubbling beige goo. I had accused him of stepping out on me with a jar of yeast.
The relief was overwhelming, but it was quickly replaced by a new, strange insecurity. He spent hours tending to that jar. He talked to it. He worried about its temperature. He bought it special rye flour.
I am now jealous of a jar of fermented flour.
I realized that while “Sasha” wasn’t a threat to my fidelity, she was definitely a threat to my free time. I now live in a house where the most pampered resident is a bacterial colony, and I have to accept that I am the second most important lady in his life, right after the bread.
