• Is Bella married or a widow?
• If Bella is married, where is her husband?
• Does Bella consider herself a single woman after almost 3 years since her husband disappeared?
• If Bella still considers herself a married woman, why does she want to try something with the MC?
• Is she looking for something serious or casual since her husband may still be alive?
• Does the reason she wears a ring mean that regardless of how she feels about the MC, she is waiting for James to come back so she can resume her marriage?
• Is she psychologically prepared to move forward and have a new romance with the MC?
• How much does she want their relationship to work? Is she willing to have her career and reputation ruined because of it?
Thousands of questions could be asked, but Bella only mentioned the handbook and Jill as the main problems... What a joke! Even the MC the next morning recognizes that they did not address all the topics necessary to move forward with a relationship.
I'm pretty sure that I exposed the fact that your complaints are fixated on James. You feel the need to inflate that with hyperbole. People do that when they at least on some level realise that their arguments are insufficient.
We can say that James will appear at some point. It would be anti-climactic if he didn't. The characters however can't expect this. To them James being alive is a big "what if". There are more pressing matters to consider.
MC turning up in her life started the process of Bella moving on. This process will not be instantaneous. We are shown multiple times how Bella worries about being unfaithful. We are also shown her to be a very private person. It is to be expected that she will not easily voice her worries and MC is smart not to press her on that.
We do know that Bella and James met in college. We don't know how their relationship progressed or when they got married, but they might have had as much as 15 years of memories before he disappeared. Moving on from that takes time.
MC and Bella are definitely due a long discussion about James, but they have naturally been distracted by the Jill situation. And now Maya's situation is another distraction. Helping Sage deal with her parents' divorce will be yet another distraction. However, distracting as they are the subjects of family and marriage are bound to spark thoughts in both of them. It's just a shame that when one of them finally says: "We need to talk" James turns up within minutes.
If Bella goes to meet Neil there are certainly possibilities for progress with the "What about James" elephant. However, Neil might also choose not to press her on the matter.
We should also remember that while we have speculated for years, the characters only met three months ago. It is not realistic to expect immense progress.
If James returns & you're not on Bella's path, would this be considered NTR? Bella is married to him, but he is a man.
No complications, no NTR, it's all just been blown out of proportion really. The script for James' return goes like this:
Bella: "Hi Fuckface, this is James, my ex husband. I used to be all neurotic and weird about our split, and my hysterics even caused you to go into an exposition-styled monologue back when we were making out in the library that time, but really it's no big deal. We both cheated on each other, separated and now he's come back to tidy up a few loose ends."
MC: "Oh, hi James, pleasure to meet you. So it's all good right, me banging your ex-wife and all that?"
James: "Hi Fuckface, the pleasure is all mine, and no, no problem at all you sticking it to the little woman. She's a wild one in the sack though isn't she? No, no, you enjoy her my boy. Actually I'm just here to finalize our divorce, we've been separated long enough now, there should be nothing to feel awkward about.
MC: "Whew, glad that was all handled amicably. I was worried there might be some scary secret between you both that was going to bite me in the ass!"
James: "Haha! No, we're all rational consenting adults here. Oh Bella,you've locked the room. I thought it was my turn to take little Jimmy's remains to stay with me for a few years..."
MC: "
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and the new(tm) tags.
Nor, would it matter since it would effectively have the same narrative reason to exist in the story and evoke the same type of emotions as 'proper' NTR regardless of any site's definition. Technicalities and loopholes change nothing and not even DPC would get away with no backlash.
