Everyone assumes that Edie will hurt Susan first. They came out to Wisteria Lane hesitantly and when they did they suffered a salvo of suspicious questions and accusations, glares from friends who thought they should have been told sooner, stares from men who never would have believed that the two most man-hungry women in Fairview could ever go gay. And Edie knows that Lynette and Bree and Gaby are talking already about how she's going to find someone else and sleep around behind Susan's back and do all sorts of terrible things, because that's what she does.
The only comfort she has is that Susan doesn't believe this. Maybe she did at first, but now Edie sees Susan's unwavering trust, her firm and steadfast belief that no, Edie will not stray. Edie sees her standing on her porch as she's leading some young man into a new house and Susan waves and smiles and never thinks, never suspects that maybe Edie's taking the man inside to sleep with him. And Edie isn't, and never does.
So she and Susan are happy. They are free of mistrust and suspicions and blame, and they say to hell with everyone who thinks that they'll never last, and Edie never suspects. She never suspects.
Soon after this, Edie discovers that it's harder to find out if your girlfriend is cheating on you with a man than if your boyfriend is cheating on you with another woman. Men don't wear perfume to be sniffed out, or lipstick to be discovered on shirt collars; they might be sloppy but they leave less behind than women. Women trail fragments of themselves like molted feathers; it's less easy for men to drop pieces behind, they're too solid for that.
Edie is reduced to walking in on them together. Susan and Mike, in flagrante delicto, and she should have known this would happen. She should have seen it behind Susan's blank-faced willingness to believe that Edie wouldn't cheat. She believed it because she was cheating already. Edie Britt's never been played for a fool before and she hates that Susan Mayer, of all people, did it to her. Sweet Susan, guileless Susan. Selfish Susan. Cruel Susan.
Mike leaves, and Edie takes Susan's clothes, her jewelry, her books and her paintings, and throws everything she can into a suitcase, and she throws it outside. She grabs photos of them together and hurls them into the street to hear the glass shattering. And then, last but definitely least, she chases Susan out, grabs her arm and throws her almost bodily out the door. Susan looks up at her with those big dark eyes and Edie doesn't care. Because finally, she is in the right. Because she knows that Susan deserves every cruelty and humiliation she gets.
"I'm sorry," Susan says, and Edie says viciously, "Tough. Shit." Then she slams the door shut.
Edie isn't surprised when it's Susan who's welcomed back into the little circle of friendship, that even though she was the wronged one, it's her left out in the cold. It doesn't matter at all. Now she can see past Susan's sad eyes and warm smile and easy laughter; she can see better than ever how the righteousness and goodness that she loved and loathed in Susan was just as fragile as origami, so easily torn asunder, set aflame.
But she doesn't know what to do when she opens the door one day and Susan is standing there. Susan says quietly, "It's you. It's always been you," and Edie stares at her and wonders, and wonders, how she came to this. Susan leans in and kisses her. Edie finds her voice and whispers, "No."