I’ve been working as a flight attendant for nearly a decade now and I know all to well how to put a fake smile whenever needed, no matter how rude the passengers are. But absolutely nothing in my decade of flying could have prepared me for the moment my actual life walked through that cabin door.
Just the previous night, Ryan, my dear husband, told me he was taking a flight to Austin the following day, yet he was right there, standing in front of me in the aisle of the plain I was working on, bound straight to Cancun. The stench of the ridiculously expensive cologne I’d gotten him for his birthday wafted through the air, and he was fully prepared for vacation attire, with his arm firmly around Ashley.
At this point, every single muscle fiber in my body was yelling out loud for me to scream, throw something, or have a complete scene right in front of a hundred and fifty people. However, I knew that doing so would only cost me my job, which I certainly wouldn’t let happen because of someone as weak and as miserable as Ryan.
So, I did what I’d do with any other passenger out there. I pointed at their identical bags, keeping my tone completely neutral, and announced them 2A and 2B seats in first class. Ryan could not even say anything and went straight through me like a zombie. A couple of minutes later, when they were comfortably seated, I simply walked down the aisle and left a cocktail napkin with a single sentence written on it: “Funny, I didn’t know Austin had beaches.”
My reaction completely messed up with his head for the next couple of hours. He couldn’t believe I didn’t throw a tantrum. But he knew me all too well and knew that whenever I acted calm, there was something truly terrible cooking beneath the surface. And he was spot-on. This wasn’t some random discovery I had made that day. I’m not stupid; I’ve had my doubts for several months and have been gathering evidence in the form of hotel receipts, deleted messages, photographs, and corporate account statements. I simply didn’t know when the best time would be to pull the trigger.
When I finally made it to the first-class section with the beverage trolley, Ryan was drenched in sweat wearing his holiday shirt. He even dared ask me to bring him carbonated water while Ashley asked for a glass of white wine. I served them their drinks with a smile, which is typical customer service behavior, but right beside her wine glass, I gave her a piece of paper I had written while working in the galley. I think it basically said something along the lines of, “Well, he does not plan on divorcing me at all. In fact, he lied about the same thing to another woman before he even knew you existed.”
You could see the moment her confidence disappeared right there before your eyes. She turned deathly pale. Immediately, he reached for the paper, but she snatched it back.
The rest of that trip to Mexico was pure torture for both of them. They didn’t touch a single bite of their first-class meals. With every step that I took down the aisle to attend to other passengers, Ryan only watched me from where he sat, with a look of fear written all over his face. Finally, when we landed and the captain switched off the “Fasten Seat Belts” sign, he jumped out of his seat to avoid me. However, being the head stewardess, I was already standing by the door to bid farewell to all the passengers.
And when Ashley tried to rush past me, I grabbed her hand and gave her an envelope that I had been hiding in the crew storage area all along. “I think this belongs to you,” is all I told her. In that envelope were copies of text messages that showed Ryan texting and flirting with another woman, Jennifer, while he was dating her. Just a few hours later, after I finally checked into my crew hotel room in Cancun, my phone beeped with a text from Ashley thanking me for letting her know Ryan was married and she was just his side chick. I didn’t feel like responding to her message.
Of course, Ryan tried to call me like a million times. I didn’t respond to any of his calls so he started messaging me, trying to convince me that it wasn’t like it looked like. Apparently, Ashley flew back home, leaving him. So I wasn’t really sure what made him more desperate, losing his wife or losing his girlfriend. Just as with Ashley, I didn’t respond to any of his messages.
I guess that at the time, he was more concerned because he was ditched and his vacation was ruined, because somehow, he believed I’d forgive him, anyways. But he was so wrong.
While he was busy figuring out his trip in Mexico, my lawyer back home was already at the courthouse filing the divorce papers. Even better, I had already emailed a massive file of his secret financial records straight to the partners at his family’s construction firm. It turned out Ryan had been funding his entire secret dating life, the fancy dinners, the jewelry, the hotel rooms, and the weekend getaways, by charging it all to company credit cards and writing it off as “business expenses.”
I didn’t know much about running companies, but I did know what he was doing was a corporate fraud, something his family wouldn’t forgive easily.
In a matter of a few weeks, his own parents took away his executive position, fired him from his job and compelled him by law to sell back his shares at a reduced price. Overnight, due to his own greed and stupidity, he had ended up losing his career, his wealth, his mistress and his wife.
A couple of months later, when we eventually met outside the court of law, where the legal proceedings were taking place, post-divorce, he looked utterly defeated. He had even gone so far as to try to block my way and apologize to me. All I could do was stop and ask him whether he was really sorry about his actions or he was just miserable that he got caught!
I didn’t hang around to witness him trip over his words. I headed straight to the airport for my next flight, and at the time, it didn’t feel like job, but as though I was finally flying to a completely new life.
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Bored Daddy
Love and Peace
