“He is the guy who contacted me on the fake dating site.” I am almost screaming as I speak. My throat feels dry, and I am wheezing a little. “He lured me to the expensive restaurant under false pretenses!”
“Oh…”
I wait for her to say more, and when she doesn’t, my aggravation is amplified.
“Care to elaborate?” I snap at her.
“It’s very dramatic when you put it that way,” she says. “Why would he lure you to an expensive restaurant?”
I roll my eyes, taking the time to run over all the facts in my head before I present them to my best friend.
“I blocked him on everything. He didn’t know how to get a hold of me, so he created this fake dating account, and messaged me through there.”
“But…” I guess now it’s her turn to analyze what I just said. “How would he know to do that?”
I put the phone on speaker and throw my arms up in despair. “Because all his damn friends were on this fake dating app at one point or another,” I explain. “One of them saw me on there, told Alex about it. Alex rushed to get on there and trick me!”
“That sounds like a very elaborate plan,” she admits.
I stick my hands in my hair, the hair spray I got on making it hard for me to run my fingers through it.
“Thank you,” I exclaim.
“Okay, so he created this profile and asked you out. Was there a picture on there?”
I roll my eyes and groan in shame. “Yes. I thought it looked like him…”
“You saw the picture and thought it looked like Alex, but you still went to meet him at the restaurant?”
There’s something in her tone of voice that puts me on the defensive. “So?”
“Why would you want to go out with a man who looks like the one you just broke up with?”
I don’t know why she’s coming at me with all this logical stuff, but I’m not a fan.
“You’re missing the point,” I almost yell at her again. “He did all that to trick me into seeing him even though I’d made it clear that I wanted nothing to do with him anymore!”
“But how could he be sure that you’d say yes to him asking you to meet under a different name?”
That stops me in my tracks. I never thought of it. I guess I could’ve just ignored any messages from Julian Lewis, just like I did with all the other ones that I’d received. Instead, I made plans to meet up.
“Did you think Justin Lewis’ picture looked like Alex before or after you said yes to dinner with him?”
I look down at the floor and tap my toe against the carpeted floor. I get where she’s going with her line of questioning. I don’t like it.
“You’re trying to imply that I said yes to Julian only because I thought he looked like Alex.”
Elizabeth chuckles softly. “Well, you just confirmed it.”
I hate crying, but I sure think it would be cathartic in this moment. It would release all this pressure inside of me. Alas, I’ve never been the type to cry just to release my emotions. The only time that I can think of that I did it was when Alex was here a couple of weeks ago. And that one was very spontaneous, also embarrassing. Fortunately, he never commented on that.
“Have you ever thought of just sitting down with Alex and talking it all out?”
I let out a snort of surprise mixed with disbelief. “I’m sorry, have you not been listening for the last four years? There is no talking to this man. He shuts me out and tells me it’s over. That’s how he operates.”
“But have you ever looked into why he’s doing that?” she insists. “There’s got to be a valid reason.”
I cross my arms over my chest and stare into space as I struggle to think. I try to remember anything that he might have shared with me over the years, but nothing specific comes to mind. Unless…
