Fiona closed the light-orange umbrella with its new smell as she drew closer to Cafe Cora, a small shop tucked between two bookstores a short distance from where she lived in a seven-story wall apartment building.

Fiona pulled open the glass door, and the warmth of the shop instantly hit her, and her body involuntarily leaped its appreciation by warming.

The cafe housed about ten brown and white tables with chairs artistically placed around the room. Some tables accommodated four customers, while others accommodated two.

Fiona glanced around the room and saw Kimberly sitting at one of the tables by a window. Kimberly waved at her, and she returned the wave.

The air was filled with freshly baked goods and hot beverages, and Fiona inhaled the scents. Hunger and contentment simultaneously filled her, and she smiled and shook her head as she placed her wet umbrella into the free plastic stand. So, with the umbrella now housed to prevent dripping water around the room, she smiled at the employee behind the counter and headed towards Kimberly.

“Hey,” Kimberly, wearing a red and white sweater and black jeans, greeted her.

“Hey,” Fiona replied, taking off her orange, white, and black raincoat, placing it on the back of the wooden chair, and sliding into the chair opposite her.

“I like your sweater,” Kimberly said.

“I hope so because you gifted it to me last Christmas.”

Kimberly laughed, and Fiona gently ran her hands across the orange and white sweater. She also wore black jeans.

“What are we eating?” Kimberly asked. “I’m buying.”

“Thanks,” Fiona replied, studying her friend’s face.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Fiona shook her head with a slight smile.

“Okay,” Kimberly said, “what are we having?”

Shortly afterwards, with a large brown and white tray in her hand, Kimberly returned to the table. Two large white cups, one with steaming hot chocolate and the other with a cappuccino with umbrella designs at the top, two blueberry muffins, and a large croissant were on the tray.

“Smells as good as they taste, hmm,” Kimberly said, taking another bite of the muffin.

They eat in silence for a few minutes.

“Chris had an affair last year, and now he’s the father of a baby girl,” Kimberly said quietly.

Fiona accidentally swallowed a piece of croissant.

Tears quietly slipped from her eyes and ran down her lightly brown mascara circular face. Fiona immediately reached out for a brown complimentary tissue on the table and handed it to her. She took it and patted her eyes.

This was not the first time Fiona had seen her friend cry throughout their twenty years of friendship after having met in kindergarten.

“I’m sorry,” Fiona replied.

Kimberly nodded

“I knew something was wrong, and I did the calculation, and I was right,” Kimberly said.

Fiona knew what she meant because last year, for the first time since meeting, dating, and then marrying Chris, Kimberly expressed doubts about his faithfulness to her. For a month, according to her, he was behaving weirdly. He picked an argument over anything and everything she did, and when he was at home, he rarely spoke to her unless she initiated the conversation. Then, it all changed, and he was not just the old Chris; he was Chris 2.0, and their relationship and marriage were the best in their five years of marriage.

“Why would he do this to me, to us?” Kimberly asked, her thick brows furrowed.

“I don’t know,” Fiona replied, “how did you find out about the affair and the child?”

“He told me about them last night.”

“So he’s still seeing her?”

“No,” Kimberly said, wiping her eyes, “about a week after they slept together, a transfer she’d put in for at work came through, and that was the last time he saw her.”

“So, did he end the affair, or did it end because she left?” Fiona asked, sipping from her cup.

“That’s the same question I asked him!” she exclaimed, “because I thought he ended the affair because he was remorseful, and that’s why he changed.”

“But it wasn’t?”

“No. He said he doesn’t know if he would have ended things with her if she did not leave.”

Fiona shook her head.

“And that’s not the kicker. The kicker is he admitted he was willing to end our marriage to be with her, but she didn’t want him.”

“What?”

Kimberly sniffled, picked up her cup, and drank a mouthful of cappuccino, then broke off the muffin and ate it.

“I was his first and only girlfriend, he said, and when she started expressing an interest in him, things moved so quickly between them that the day she told him she was leaving was the day he was coming home to ask me for a divorce.”

“I’m sorry,” Fiona said, covering her mouth.

Some more tables in the cafe were now full, but neither Fiona nor Kimberly noticed.

“Earlier that day, she said she wanted to talk with him about something, and he thought she was going to give him an ultimatum, she or me, and he had already decided it was her.”

“But it didn’t turn out that way?”

“No. She wanted to tell him the transfer she’d requested came through, so the two of them were over. This caught him by surprise, but she was surprised. She was surprised because she thought both of them knew they were just having fun. She was not looking for something permanent with him.”

“That must have stung,” Fiona said, chewing.

“Yes, it did, but it was only after she said, ‘besides, you are cheating on your wife, and if you did it to her, if we had something permanent, you might do the same thing to me, and I cannot live like that,’” Kimberly said.

“Wow! What?”

“Yes, and that’s when he came to his senses, and his feelings for her changed. The gravity of his betrayal towards me and our marriage overwhelmed him. So, there and then he promised himself that he would never cheat on me again, and that’s why I see the change in him.”

Silence fell between them, but low conversations, quiet laughter, and rain on the glass windows filled the air.

“The thing is, right,” Kimberly said, “I don’t know what to make of this. I don’t know what to do. What should I do, Fiona? Should I make things even by going out and getting another man’s child? Should I divorce him because, as a general rule, once a cheater always a cheater, or should I just accept his apology, accept the child, and move on with our lives? What should I do?”

Fiona reached out and took her friend’s hand and squeezed it.

“I’ll share a story with you,” Fiona said, “then you can tell me what you will because you, and not me, need to make this decision.”

Kimberly nodded, biting her lower lip.

The End