“So, do you think this means I shouldn’t trust Alex?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Honestly, Mel, I have no idea.”
Lia downed the rest of her margarita and hopped off her barstool to go to the bathroom. In her absence, I pulled out my phone. Without even thinking, I loaded my browser and went directly to Alex’s JerkAlert profile. It was almost a reflex now, checking to see if any new reviews had been posted while I’d been busy living in the real world.
Turned out, there hadn’t been.
So maybe things would be different this time. Maybe Alex was telling me the truth. Maybe he’d meant it when he told me he was in this a hundred percent.
Maybe all I could do was cross my fingers and hope everything worked out.
21
The next morning, I woke up feeling rested, refreshed, and ready to approach this whole Alex situation with a new attitude.
First, I would stop being so shady. I unfollowed JBoogie on Twitter and made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t check Alex’s JerkAlert profile ever again.
Second, I would stop being so paranoid. Sure, Alex checked his phone a lot, but that didn’t mean he was screwing around with other women. He was launching a start-up, for crying out loud. Of course he was distracted.
Finally, I would start being direct. No more pointless speculating; no more Google stalking exes. Whenever something was bothering me, whenever I had a question or concern, I’d come right out and ask him about it.
Also, I’d fess up about JerkAlert.
Eventually.
Excited to start implementing my new strategy right away, I dropped by Alex’s cubicle to invite him to lunch. He wasn’t there, so I wound up eating my peanut butter sandwich alone at my desk. Later on, I swung by again, but he was still MIA. He never signed into Slack, either. Thinking maybe he’d called in sick, I texted with a quick, Hey, everything okay? No response.
Was I about to be ghosted?
A little after five o’clock, I shut down my computer. Time to go home and face the weekend. Alone. With no plans. One final burst of naive hope inspired me to take the long way out, though, and I was glad I did. Because I finally found Alex, hunched over his laptop, looking totally defeated.
“Hey,” I said. He startled at the sound of my voice, gaping at me as if I was the last person on earth he’d expected to see. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, yeah.” His gaze traveled back to his computer screen. “No, not really.”
Apparently, Fizz was facing a crisis.
“I’ve been in meetings all day with Greg and Vijay,” he said. “We are so behind schedule, I don’t think it’s possible for us to catch up. And Greg is so fucking useless, I—” He stopped abruptly, rubbing his jaw. “I should just give up now. There’s no point.”
“No, don’t say that.” I knelt beside his chair and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “It always seems impossible before it’s done. How can I help?”
He turned to me with a somber smile. “You’re wonderful, you know that?”
My heart softened like warm butter. “Seriously. What can I do?”
“Nothing.” Alex gestured at his laptop with irritation. “There’s this major bug that’s existed for days. I keep trying to fix it, but at this point I’m only making it worse. It has a work-around, but that ruins the whole user experience. I feel like I’ve stared at it for hours and I am no closer to coming up with a solution.”
“Well, sometimes when I’m having a hard time solving a problem, I step away from it for a little while. Give my brain a break. Then, when I come back to it with fresh eyes, it’s like I magically find a way to fix it.” I stroked his wrist, the soft skin peeking out from beneath the cuff of his shirt. “Why don’t you go for a walk or something?”
With a deep breath, he said, “You’re right. I need to step away.” He slapped his laptop closed and shoved it in his bag. “In fact, I’m gonna bring this home with me. Maybe a change of scenery will help.”
“Great. Mind if I join you?”
He knitted his brow. “Um...”
That was not the reaction I’d been hoping for. I was thinking he’d give me an enthusiastic “Absolutely!” Or at the very least, a lukewarm “Sure.” Instead, he was hesitating, chewing the inside of his bottom lip, thinking it over as if this was some thorny problem to be solved. Like I was a bug in his code.
Then I thought: Stop being so paranoid. Obviously, he was very busy. He probably just wanted some peace and quiet so he could work.
“I’m sorry.” I stood up and brushed off the front of my pants. “Forget it.”
“No, Mel, I—”
“Really, it’s totally fine. You need your space to work. I understand.”
“I do have to take care of this, but I’d still love to spend time with you. Are you okay with watching me code?”
“Of course,” I said, beaming. “You can bounce ideas off me if you need to.”
“Great.” He stood up and kissed me. It was quick, even a little chaste, but the contact was enough to leave a shivering sensation on my lips that traveled straight through to my toes.
We headed out, hand in hand, and the moment we walked into his apartment, he was already reaching for his laptop.
“You were right about stepping away.” He stood at the breakfast bar, waiting for his system to load. “On the walk over here, I got a couple of ideas for how to get this thing working again.”
“That’s awesome.” I put down my purse and popped open his fridge. “Can I get you something to drink while you’re working?”
“Uh, sure.” He focused in on the computer screen, and while his hands flew across the keyboard, I poured us two glasses of wine. After a few minutes of silence, he let out a frustrated roar.
“Not working?” I asked.
“Nope.” He gulped down half his glass of merlot in one swallow.
“Would it help to talk it through with me?”
“Couldn’t hurt.” He slid closer, so I could see his screen, then explained the crux of the problem, walking me through his code line by line. We ran through a few test cases, checking values in the debugger.
“I just don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
“It’s because of this.” I pointed to a function call. “On line two fifteen, you’re passing this value by reference—it’s getting modified within the procedure.”
His eyes bulged. “Oh my God. How did I miss that?”
“I told you, there’s something about a fresh set of eyes.”
“No, there’s something about your eyes.” He kissed my forehead. “I love this big, delicious brain of yours.”
Love. He’d said it in a playful way, yes, but men so rarely played around with that word. Not unless there was a hint of truth behind it.
He tapped a few keys before letting out a triumphant whoop and shoving his laptop aside. “Now that you solved that problem for me, we can hang out properly.”
“You mean you’re done with your work?”
“Technically, I’m never really done. If I wanted to, I could work all night, all weekend, and still have more to do.”
Anxiety darted through his eyes and his mouth turned downward. And suddenly, I realized something that should have been crystal clear from the very beginning.
“You really are always working when you say you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you’re distracted with your phone or get up to leave first thing in the morning or forget to text me or whatever, you’re not lying when you say it’s about work. You really are working that much.”
“Of course I am. Haven’t I been telling you what a nightmare this whole thing has been?”
“You have. I’ve had a hard time believing it, though. A lot of guys say they’re working when they’re not. It�
�s a convenient excuse, you know what I mean?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Not really. You sound kinda paranoid.”
“Well, I am kinda paranoid. But it’s because I’ve been through this before.”
“Did your ex lie to you about working when he wasn’t?”
“No. Not my ex. My dad.”
Alex leaned toward me and caressed the back of my hand. His expression was an open invitation. Fully focused, no distractions. “What did he do?”
I told him what I knew about my mother and my father and the demise of their marriage. Which wasn’t much, admittedly, but it was enough to make me question men and their motives for the rest of my life. The whole time, Alex listened intently. When I was done, he pulled me into an embrace.
“I’m sorry that happened to you.” He stroked my hair with what could only be construed as love. “And I want you to know that I would never do that to you. I promise, I’ll never give you a reason to doubt me.”
His lips touched mine, and in that moment, I knew it could be so easy to surrender to his words. To give up this burden of suspicion I carried around with me all the time. To believe him, and in so doing, allow him to lighten the load.
I deepened the kiss, and he responded in kind. His hands slowly worked their way down my shoulders, my breasts, my stomach, before diving beneath my waistband. And when I felt his fingers between my legs, I could no longer control myself. We did it right there on the breakfast bar.
Like feral beasts, panting and growling and clawing at each other’s bodies. Our friction could’ve set the kitchen on fire. When we were finished, he collapsed forward, holding me in his arms, breathing heavy against my neck. He looked spent, satisfied.
“That was the hottest thing ever,” he muttered.
Once we caught our breath and disentangled ourselves from one another, I went to the bathroom to clean up, feeling more confident than ever. Alex and I were solid. He wasn’t gonna ghost me the first chance he could. Like he said, he was in this a hundred percent. I was his one and only, and we were in this for the long haul. I was sure of it.
Until I had a good look around the bathroom.
I swear: I wasn’t snooping. It’s just that while I was washing my hands, my eyes started to wander and I noticed a hot-pink razor in the corner of the shower stall. A woman’s razor. Right next to a travel size can of raspberry-scented shave gel.
Funny, that wasn’t there last time. Was it?
Naturally, my curiosity was piqued. I pulled back the shower curtain to see what else was in there. A bar of soap, some shampoo, a damp washcloth hanging off the showerhead. Nothing else particularly girlie.
But what might’ve been in the medicine cabinet?
A little voice whispered in my ear: Stop being so shady. But I easily ignored it and swung open the mirrored door to find a half-empty bottle of Prada Candy. The fragrance. For women.
So, of course, then I had to look under the sink, where, crammed behind a bottle of Liquid-Plumr and a six-pack of toilet paper, I found Alex’s secret stash of Tampax Pearls. The variety pack, for the varied degrees of his monthly flow.
Was this why he’d hesitated when I’d asked to come over? Because he hadn’t yet had a chance to clean up the mess his last girl had left behind?
Okay, okay.
I was not going to freak out. Freaking out would not solve anything. Instead, I was going to calmly and rationally ask Alex what the fuck was going on.
After two deep, centering breaths, I went to the bedroom. Alex was on the bed, engrossed in his phone, not even looking up as I sat down next to him. His eyes were wide, his thumbs were tapping furiously. He muttered, “Oh man,” under his breath.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Totally calm, totally rational.
“Nothing,” he said, turning off his phone display and resting it on the nightstand. “I’m getting hungry. You wanna order dinner?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
He reached out and stroked my arm. “Is something wrong?”
Start being direct, I thought. This was the perfect opportunity to come right out and ask him about what I saw in the bathroom.
“No, I’m fine.”
Nice work, Mel.
“Okay.” From the lilt in his voice, I could tell he wasn’t totally convinced, but he didn’t press the issue. “Why don’t you check Seamless and pick out something good?”
“What’re you in the mood for?”
“I leave the decision in your capable hands.” With an elaborate flourish, he bowed before me, then bounded off for the bathroom.
I was fine.
This was all fine.
I was merely overreacting. All that girlie stuff in the bathroom had probably been there before and I just hadn’t noticed it.
Maybe it was leftover from JBoogie. You know, the girl he’d ghosted after sex.
But if he was never serious about her, then why did he let her store a stash of tampons under the sink?
Was there someone else he’d been serious about who he hadn’t admitted to?
Or was I really just the side chick?
No more pointless speculating. I pulled up the Seamless app and scrolled through available deliveries in the neighborhood. As I tried to decide between poke bowls and pad thai, Alex’s phone buzzed, and I looked up to see the screen lit with a text notification.
And I swear: I wasn’t snooping. His phone was lying there on the nightstand, faceup, clearly visible to the world. Was I expected to turn away from it? To will my eyes not to see and my brain not to interpret the words displayed so plainly on the screen?
Of course, I wish that’s what I had done. Instead, I got closer and read the damning evidence.
From: Jenny
i never heard from you. did you like my little surprise?
Somewhere in the distance, drums pounded. Steady, unrelenting, getting closer and closer by the second. Then I realized they weren’t drums at all, but the surge of my heartbeat, thumping in my chest, reverberating in my ears, flooding my body with adrenaline and fury.
I had heard the name Jenny before. This was the woman I’d met that first night at the bar. The woman he’d said was his first Fluttr date that didn’t work out. Why the fuck were they still texting each other?
Alex came out of the bathroom and I couldn’t even look at him. With my eyes on the floor and my voice calm and even, I said, “I think you got a text.”
He picked up his phone, unlocking it with a swipe of his thumb. The room filled with palpable silence as I watched him read the message, lock the screen, and drop the phone back onto his nightstand. His face betrayed nothing. He didn’t even flinch.
“Who was it?” I asked, giving him a chance to tell me the truth. “Was it work?”
“Nah. Just spam.”
Liar.
Alex had accused me of being paranoid like it was some kind of flaw. But obviously, it was a strength, because my suspicions were right on target. He’d been lying all along.
“Are you sure that’s what it was?”
“What do you mean?” He pinched his brows together, miming confusion. Trying to paint me like the overly paranoid girl.
“What was the surprise?”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Stop playing dumb. Just stop it.” I felt my voice getting louder but had lost all control over its pitch. “I saw the text, okay?”
“What? Why were you going through my phone?”
“I wasn’t going through your phone. It was sitting there on the nightstand. The text popped up and I looked over at it and—”
“So you admit to reading my texts.”
I crossed my arms against my chest, holding on tightly. “Is that the same Jenny from the night we met at The Barley House?”
Ale
x breathed in deeply, his bare chest expanding, his eyes focused on the ceiling. “Yes. But I haven’t seen her since then. She just texted me today.”
“Right, I’m sure. What was ‘the surprise’?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
He snatched his phone, swiping through it while working his jaw. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered, then held the screen out for me to see.
It was a close-up of a nude woman’s torso. Two gigantic swollen breasts with pert pink nipples. The sensuous curve of collarbones. Above that, her lips, curled in a smile and painted berry red.
“Why is this on your phone?”
“She sent it to me!” He hurled his phone at his mattress, where it bounced off and landed on the floor. “I have no control over what she sends or doesn’t send. I certainly didn’t ask for it. Aren’t you the one who was always saying how men send you unsolicited dick pics all the time?”
Ignoring the logic in that statement, I pushed forward. “Are those her tampons under your sink, too?”
“What?” His hands went to his head, pulling at his curls. “Why were you snooping around my bathroom?”
“I didn’t have to snoop to see the evidence. Her razor and shaving cream were sitting in plain sight on the edge of the tub.” He squinted, like he was trying to envision the state of his bathroom. “You forgot it was there, didn’t you?”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you doing this?”
“You said I could trust you.” I was warbling now, but I couldn’t stop. “You said you would never give me a reason to doubt your words, and you lied.”
“I didn’t lie. What did I lie about?”
The audacity of this man, to double down on his deception. He was trying to make me think it was all in my head, to get me to drop it. Well, I wasn’t dropping anything.
“So Jenny sent you a picture of her tits, out of nowhere? After two weeks of no communication, she just randomly decided to text you today.”
His cheeks flushed and he scratched the back of neck. “Well, I actually texted her first. But it’s only because of what we talked about yesterday.”
How to Hack a Heartbreak Page 19