Hi Julian,
I haven’t heard back from you since the other night when you were a no show at the restaurant. I understand that things happen, but a courtesy email after would’ve gone a long way.
A grin spreads across my lips as I pick up at the tone of her email. She is pissed.
I don’t have time to play games. I need a date for this Christmas party, and I’d rather have one in place before we get too close to the holidays. Everyone will be needing one then. If you are no longer interested in meeting, that’s fine. I have a few other feelers out, so no big deal. If I don’t hear back from you by tomorrow morning at the latest, I am moving on.
Mona
The smile disappears from my face as I read the message back a couple more times.
“What the fuck!”
“What’s going on?” Kyle is halfway up from his seat, stretching to see my phone.
“She has other feelers out!” My voice booms when I tell him. “Who the fuck else is she seeing?”
He stands up from the chair across my desk and walks around to see what my deal is. He shrugs a couple of times as he reads Mona’s message, then gives me my phone back.
“Well, I’m thinking this means she got messages from other guys, not just you, or Julian, or whatever the hell you call yourself on there.”
That is something I never took into consideration before. But I guess it makes sense since her profile is public.
“I need to hack into her account,” I say out loud.
“Dude,” Kyle chuckles nervously. “You can’t do that.”
I shake my head at him. “Why the fuck not? Not like I’m gonna do anything wild in there. Just turn messages from others off, so she can get messaged only from me.”
“That’s still illegal,” Kyle insists. “And if she finds out, isn’t she going to want to press charges? She hates you, remember?”
I huff at that. “She didn’t hate me enough not to eat averyexpensive dinner I paid for.”
Kyle stares at me for a few seconds. He takes his time turning things over in his head, and I can only pray that he will come up with a good solution for me. I can’t believe I am counting on Kyle out of all people to save my relationship with Mona.
Except for the fact that there is no relationship with Mona anymore. I managed to fuck it all up, and as far as putting it all back together goes, it’s not looking good at all.
“How about you tell me exactly how this dinner date went,” he suggests.
I take a deep breath in before letting it all out, not ready to share anything with him, while at the same time needing him to be my sounding board.
“I made the reservation under the fake name,” I start. “Then, I got there and sat at her table. While I was talking to her…”
“So she did talk to you?” Kyle sounds skeptical. “She didn’t punch you in the face? Or kick you in the balls? Storm out of there?”
“No.”
“Hmmm…” He stares at me pensively. “Go on.”
“I scheduled for a call to be made to the restaurant and tell Mona that Julian Lewis couldn’t make it.”
He is now staring at me in disbelief. “So she just decided to stay anyway and have dinner with you?”
I open and close my mouth a few times, trying to make sense of everything in my own head before I transfer the information into Kyle’s.
“Well, she did ask the waiter for the most expensive steak on the menu, knowing that I’d pay for it…”
Kyle’s laughter can be heard from two blocks over, I am sure of it. “That sounds more like her!”
