“I had just broken up with my boyfriend, so I signed up as Nya Bellacorte. I used a picture of myself before I cut my hair off, without all the makeup and the glamour. I met someone that night. It was crazy how fast it happened. I ignored all the other interests for this one person, and we messaged in the app back and forth all night.
“Although we hadn’t seen each other aside from our pictures, I felt like he saw me that night, you know? He really got me. Our conversation was intense, and when I walked away from the party with my friends’ reminders to delete my profile and the app, I knew that I wouldn’t. After spending several years with people who didn’t really know me or get me, it felt refreshing. He made me feel pure and wholesome.”
“Do you think that person knew it was you and maybe stalked you on the app?”
“Couldn’t have. It was my first time being on there. Needless to say, I looked forward to our conversations every day. Long story short, I wanted to meet, and he didn’t. We had phone conversations once a week, but other than that, he didn’t have time to talk on the phone or meet. We kept that up for a year with me falling head over heels in love the entire time, until my sister and best friend forced me to pop up and surprise him.”
“How did that go? Was he married? Did he not look like his picture? Did he lie about his job or his age?”
She closed her eyes, and I could see the pain etched on her face. I wanted to find the nigga who had hurt her and beat his ass.
“I wish it were that simple, Navy. No, he wasn’t married, he didn’t lookanythinglike his picture, he didn’t lie about his job, or his age. He didn’t do any of that because he wasn’t a he but a she.”
“What?”
“Yes, the person I had fallen in love with was a woman. So, no, she wasn’t married, she didn’t look like the picture, and she didn’t lie about her job, but she did embellish the title quite a bit, which took a wild stretch of the imagination, and she definitely lied about her age. She wasn’t in her thirties at all, but she looked more like she was about twenty-three or twenty-four.”
“Damn. How did she explain herself?”
“She didn’t.”
“Why not? Didn’t she realize that she owed you at least that much?”
She closed her eyes, dragged her knees further up the bed and against her chest, and sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. I could tell she was fighting not to cry, and that shit bothered me. It wasn’t okay to pretend to be someone you weren’t, mislead someone, or manipulate their emotions.
“I didn’t give her the chance to explain. I ran, and I never looked back,” she explained softly.
I pulled her closer to me and turned her around to put her back to my chest. I wrapped her in my arms, and rather than asking her any more questions, I kissed the top of her head and held her while she cried.
“Do you think you might ever give her the chance to explain her actions? I think there might be some healing in that.”
“Not sure. The only thing that I know is that the pain was so raw that I’ve got all these scabs on the places that she hurt. I mean, what did I do to deserve that treatment?” She sobbed hard again. I kissed her repeatedly before answering.
“That’s not the question you should be asking. She’s a fucked-up individual who targeted you.”
“I keep thinking about how I purposely didn’t put my full name on there, because I didn’t want anyone to know that I was a supermodel. I didn’t want to be targeted for who I was. It wasn’t like I was trying to mislead anyone. I put my real picture up, my nickname, and the career that I chose in the ‘fashion industry.’ I never purposely misled anyone. Why would she do that to me?”
I tilted her chin and forced her to look into my eyes. Even without the long butterfly eyelashes, she still was gorgeous and had a nice length to her own curly lashes.
“Those are the answers that you deserve, Nyako. I know that you don’t want to face her again or whatever, but when I’m sitting here looking at you like this, all I see is pain. You deserve to have a beautiful future filled with hope and love. How the hell you gon’ get that in the condition you’re in right now? It makes it hard to trust when you can’t even forgive the person for what they did to you, especially when you don’t know why. Even if her answer doesn’t make sense, Nyako, you deserve to have her attempt to explain.
“I think the greatest thing that you could get out of confronting her is letting her know how you feel. She needs to know what she did to your life and the impact that she’s had on your ability to be in a relationship. How many other people will she do this to if she’s not held accountable?”
“I know. It’s just so hard. I mean, you see those shows all the time where people are being catfished. I never thought that I would be one. How foolish of me? And I have the money to investigate, but I didn’t. I had no business being on those sites anyway, but one drunk and high night . . .”
“You trusted her. You wanted to believe the person on the other end of the computer and the phone was real and genuine. What’s a relationship if it’s not built on trust?”
“Have you gotten over what was done to you?”
I inhaled deeply and slowly exhaled. “I’m learning how to trust women again. Am I ready to jump into something else? That remains to be seen.”
“Mm.” She reached up and stroked my face. “Sounds like you’ve got some healing to do too.”
“Yeah, I do. I’m actively working on it. I don’t talk about it with everyone, but I do talk about it with my therapist and the people who were around during that time, a couple teammates, and my brother.”
She smiled a slow, sweet, and steady smile. “I didn’t know guys sat around and had kumbaya moments like that.”
“We do what’s necessary for survival.”
