Page 61 of Fake-Off with Fate
“Yup. She was outside of Shirley May’s when I came out.”
“What did she want?” Ashlyn looks displeased, and I can’t help but hope she’s also the tiniest bit jealous.
“She asked me to go back to New York with her and give her another chance.”
The muscles in Ashlyn’s face appear to sag in unison. “Oh.”
“I told her that I lived in Maple Falls now and I wasn’t going back to New York.”
She raises her chin just enough that our eyes connect. “Does that mean she’s moving here?”
“What? No! I’m not getting back together with her. I told her we were through.”
Ashlyn looks relieved. “How did she take that?”
“It obviously wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she seemed to accept it. I expect she went right to the airport and got on the first plane out of here.”
“Wow. Okay. I mean, I guess I’m glad for you that you got closure.”
“I didn’t need closure,” I remind her.
“Maybe so, but I think it was good for you to see Allegra again. Just so you know for sure.”
“I knew for sure when she called me from Martinique and told me she wasn’t coming home. I didn’t need to see her to know there was no coming back from that.”
Ashlyn kicks off her shoes before putting her feet up on the coffee table. “Did you feel anything when you saw her?”
“I guess I felt a little bit sorry for her,” I say. “But I mainly felt like I didn’t know her anymore. Does that make sense?”
Ashlyn’s head bobs up and down. “I dated a guy for five months once. One night, when we weren’t getting together, I went to a Dodgers game with some girlfriends. Turns out, he was there with two other guys and three women. It looked like they were on a group date.”
“Creep,” I say for lack of anything else coming to mind.
“Yeah, but the thing was, that even though I knew it washim, he didn’t seem like the man I knew. It was like I was watching a total stranger.”
“How so?” I ask, intrigued to hear her answer.
Shrugging, she itemizes, “He laughed differently. He held his head differently. He even parted his hair on the other side.”
“Maybe the guy you were dating had a twin,” I suggest.
She snorts. “I thought the same thing! But I took out my phone and texted him to see what he’d do.”
Taking off my own shoes, I follow her lead and put my feet up. “What happened?”
“As soon as I sent my text, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and read it. Then he ignored it and went back to his date.”
“Ouch.”
“You’d think I would have wanted to go up to him and call him out, but I didn’t. I had this overwhelming sensation that I was receiving a warning, and I should take it to heart. This guy wasn’t the one for me.”
There are so many people who aren’t on the up and up, it makes me sick. Trying to make light of a tough situation, I say, “I bet he wasn’t from Utah.”
Ashlyn’s laugh comes out like a bark. “You got that right.” Then she teases me right back. “He was probably from New York City.”
“He was probably from LA.”
“Maybe so,” she says. “So, anyway, no more Allegra, huh?”
