He wiped his brow. I shook my head. He tried to touch me. I pulled away. He asked me for a hug. I refused. He put his hands on the tops of my arms near my shoulders to stop me from walking away from him. “Don’t you have anything you want to ask me?” His voice shook.
I locked eyes with him as we had so many times before. I said nothing as I steadied my breathing.
Do I have questions for you? Yes. So many questions. My mind almost exploded as I thought of them.
We had a date one night. You were late. You were flustered. You spent most of the evening shaking your head at your phone. You were arguing with somebody, weren’t you? Taylor must’ve stood you up.
You don’t accept tags on your Facebook because you’re a cheater and a liar and have multiple women you’re cheating with on there, right? In fact, what’s really true is that those women knew about me. They just didn’t know about each other. That’s what you were really hiding.
You told your new family about all the women almost right off the bat didn’t you? That’s why they always looked at me sideways. Because you told them YOUR version of the story and your mom wanted so desperately to believe in you like you wanted to believe in her. And that’s why she became unkind to me, even when I tried so hard to be nice to her.
That new co-worker, Amy? She told somebody later that a “creepy guy” at her work wouldn’t leave her alone. It was you, wasn’t it?
Where did you and Taylor go the day after your 50th birthday and why did you call Emme and cry to her saying nobody cared about you when we spent the entire weekend celebrating you?
Why did you have Taylor’s wedding date in your phone calendar?
You met somebody at the grocery store, huh? That’s why you were always there. Setting up your new victim?
You waited for your dog to die so you wouldn’t have to pay a pet deposit somewhere, didn’t you?
You were slowly organizing your things in the garage when I wasn’t looking for an easy move, weren’t you? Clothes missing from the closet were not my imagination. You were slowly moving out, weren’t you?
I am certain my face was full of disgust. And then suddenly, I opened my mouth and spoke.
“I actually do have a question for you.”
“What is it?” His voice was quiet.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this rental last week when you rented it?”
He shifted in front of me, his eyes growing dark and his body stiffening. I could see the monster take over his body, slithering back into him from his feet to his head.
“Well, that’s easy.” He smiled. “I needed a place to stay.”
For You
He left that night with a sleeping bag, cot, pillow, and a pan. I don’t know if he was going camping or to his new place, but it only took a month before he came groveling back. He begged me to let him stay and did all the things that once really touched my heart. But, this time, it only took me a minute to figure out that his house was being painted and that’s why he wanted to come back. I’ll bet he had a mini heart attack when he got to his new place and it wasn’t ready for him and he had nowhere to go but beg me. Then a month later, he tried again. I was much stronger by that time. I was healing and completely unwilling to put up with his bullshit.
But, there was also still this part of me that felt like I was the only friend he really had. He took me out to dinner a few times, and mind you – all of his things were still in my garage. As far as I knew, he still only had the cot and his pan. No television. No bed. Not much of anything. I didn’t feel sorry for him about that, though. He had been living for free for so long that he had plenty of time to save money to buy whatever he wanted.
He started coming back very strong the last week of November. We had time apart. I hadn’t forgotten who he was. I knew what I was dealing with. But, at the same time – I missed him. I missed the Christmas Eve moment and for a brief time, I was weak again. I let him back in.
And then, on the first Friday in December, he was getting ready for work and I could see it all over him. Something was wrong again. I laid in bed and watched him. I can’t accurately explain what I was feeling, but I was paralyzed in fear as he sat down next to me. He said nothing as he gently moved my hair from my face and stared at me. He leaned in with his hand on my cheek and he kissed me.
Not just any kiss. A long, sweet, soft kiss.
He knew it. I knew it.
We were saying goodbye.
For the next thirty-three days before I heard from him again, I wanted to romanticize that last moment. I wanted it to be something that I could hold onto in some weird, sick way. But, as it turns out – that night, that very night, he treated himself to a steak dinner and a beer on my credit card. Mine. That I forgot he had.
I immediately locked it. And the only way I knew he was alive was that he tried to use it later for an Uber. A $10 Uber. I wanted to send him a text saying, “need a ride?” But I resisted. He was falling apart enough already.
And come to find out, he really was falling apart. When he finally texted me in January for his things, he said he had locked himself in his room for thirty-six hours at Christmas and tried to drown the monster by drinking himself to death. He won in the end, he said. He quit drinking and he had finally healed himself. He finally realized how wrong he was to me, to all the women in his life, and to me.
He asked me for another chance to prove it.
Things were different for me by this point. It had been four months since he moved out. I was starting to ease back into the dating scene and I was seeing a therapist, which I wish I had done so much earlier during all of this. I didn’t have those feelings about him anymore. But I agreed to dinner to hear him out.
It was the middle of January. We went to our favorite restaurant where we were greeted by the same college-aged bartender who had seen us so many times before. We sat by the window and watched the snow. Again. He had water. And then he talked and talked and talked and told me about all the epiphanies he’d had in the past few months and how he finally knew where he needed to be. He was excited about this new him and halfway into his sermon, I was excited about him, too. He had plans. He had his finances together. He finally had a future. And, he wanted me in it.
We talked at length at how that would work. He would stay in his own place. He would pay his own bills. I wouldn’t pay for all the dates. There would be no more women. He wouldn’t hide his social media. He would allow me access to his phone if I asked.
All the things. He agreed to all the things.
We had another date the next week and then the next.
And then, the first week in February, he cancelled because he was going to Seattle to see his mom and said he would be over the next weekend.
It was the next weekend that I figured it all out. He had to come back and lure me back because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to complete the cycle.
Idealize. Devalue. Discard.
The switch flipped. He texted and said he was picking up his things the next weekend. He didn’t say much at the time, but I knew this was not going to go well. I went to work the day he came to get his things, but I watched him on the cameras because I was uneasy about what he might take. I immediately noticed he was with a woman and another man, and the cameras weren’t clear enough to make out exactly who they were. But, I found out later, after she messaged me, that it was a girl he worked with – the one he was sharing inappropriate pictures and messages with on Messenger while she was married – the one he said he hated. She laughed saying that he wanted me to believe he hated her, but he didn’t and they had always been friends. When I asked her if her husband knew she was a whore, she blocked me and ran away like the little bitch she was, but the question still remained – what exactly was Joe doing?