“No. I don’t remember what happened between me and Jacob Stone in fourth grade. Please, enlighten me.”
“He had a crush on you,” she said. “And even though you refused to admit it, everyone knew you had a crush on him too. One day in class, he was doing that thing little boys do when they like a girl, trying to annoy you. He kept poking you in the back of the head, but he only did it like three times when all of a sudden you burst into tears and you yelled for the teacher. Later, at recess, we asked what happened and you told us the story, but we were all super confused because normally you didn’t let stuff like that get to you. Normally, if a kid was poking you in the head, you would’ve kindly told them to stop, and if they didn’t, you would’ve raised your hand and requested calmly that the teacher make the kid stop. That’s the cool and collected response we had all come to expect from you, but when it was Jacob Stone who was bugging you, something just… snapped.”
“I vaguely remember this,” I said. “But in my version of events, I didn’t freak out and start crying. I just told him to stop and then got the teacher.”
“That’s not what happened, trust me.”
And, unfortunately, I had to. Steph had an amazing memory for stuff like this, and I had been lying a little when I told her how I remembered the story. I did recall crying, and I also recalled talking about what happened and how much I hated Jacob Stone for weeks to come. Why had that bothered me so much?
“When you like someone,really like someone,I think it makes you feel a little out of control and that scares you, so your emotions go a little nuts and you find any reason to make that person unlikeable again so you can regain your control.”
I contested. “That’s not true. I never did anything like that with Bret.”
Steph took a beat before responding. In that silence, I had a feeling I knew what she was thinking and even though I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it, I asked anyway. “What are you holding back from saying?”
“Nothing.”
“... Stephanie.”
“Fine,” she said. “I was just thinking that maybe the fact that you didn’t feel out of control with Bret was because you never really loved him as much as you thought you did?” She gasped. “Oh God, now that I’ve said that out loud I hear how terrible it is. I’m sorry, Lily. Ignore me, I don’t know anything about your relationship with Bret. I was just connecting some dots that had no business being connected.”
“I don’t know,” I said softly. “Maybe you’re right.”
I started to think back on how I felt when I first met Bret but then quickly shut those thoughts down. That was too much for me to get into that night. “I should probably go,” I said. “I want to get to the office early tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry if I said something that upset you.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’mfine. I’ll call you later okay?”
“Okay. Have a good night.”
“You too.” I hung up and then let my body fall back onto the bed, where I lay staring up at the ceiling for a while, trying and failing at not thinking about my once-upon-a-time college sweetheart and our doomed engagement.
* * *
A little before 10, I crawled into bed and closed my eyes, but sleep did not come easy. I tossed and turned a bunch, and half an hour later, I ended up reaching for my phone and browsing social media even though I knew that would only serve to keep me up later.
Without really thinking about it, I went to the search bar on one of my pages and typed in the name David Becker. I had been mulling over what Stephanie said all evening about how I might’ve been wrong in assuming David was out to get me, and a part of me was curious as to how the man presented himself when he wasn’t at work. The first profile I found for him, however, was a carefully curated one. The profile picture was the same photo from the company website, and all his posts had to do with Becker Tech. There was no personal information on the page save where he went to business school, which made me laugh. Was this man nothing more than his job? I thought I had seen something more in him when we met in Hawaii, but maybe that was just the alcohol clouding my judgment.
I went back to my initial search but before I clicked back to my home feed, I noticed another profile for David Becker listed under the first one. I squinted at the profile picture and brought my phone a lot closer to my face. Itdidlook like him. I clicked on this other profile and opened up a completely different life story.
The account hadn’t been updated, nor had he posted anything to it in five years, but from the pictures that were on there I could see it was David. And the pictures onthisprofile were a lot more personal. It looked like an account that belonged to a real human being, unlike his other one. There were photos of him and his brothers, Matt and Adam, out camping and a photo of him on a boat with some friends having a few beers. One photo showed him with a toddler, the two of them were laughing at something that went unexplained, and in the caption, I read that it was his nephew. Some pictures were just nature shots, and I noticed when I went back far enough that there was a golden retriever featured in a lot of the photos.
He has a dog?
I’m not sure why this surprised me so much, lots of people had dogs. It was a point in his favor in my book since I liked dogs, so maybe that was why I was so confused by it. I didn’t know if I wanted him to be gaining any favor with me.
I spent more time than I’d like to admit going through his profile, and the more photos I saw of him laughing, smiling, and just living life, the more I started to think I did perhaps misjudge this man.
Maybe he wasn’t trying to cut me down. At least, that didn’t seem like something the guy inthesephotos would do. But then again, maybe this man, the one from five-plus years ago, didn’t exist anymore. Maybe the job had changed David that much. It had been known to happen.
I turned my screen off and put my phone away, flipping over in bed and closing my eyes for the second time that night.
This time, however, I did fall asleep and had a dream about adopting a golden retriever puppy.
ChapterEight
DAVID