It was our second night in New York, and Ashley and I had just returned to our hotel room after seeing Hamilton and having dinner with my aunt and uncle. I hadn’t checked my phone in several hours and was starting to miss it.
I opened Twitter to find several messages waiting for me from an unfamiliar woman with a big smile and long, wavy blonde hair. I remembered a comment Ashley made when we first started talking that her ex-girlfriend resembled Anna Kendrick.
This woman resembled Anna Kendrick.
She told me that I was dating her abuser, Ashley. I didn’t know what that meant exactly or what form of abuse since there are so many to choose from– emotional? Mental? Spiritual? Financial? Physical? My spine shuddered at the thought.
“Who is this woman?” I asked, holding her profile picture up to Ashley’s face.
Ashley went silent for what felt like an eternity but was probably closer to twenty seconds. What was she thinking? Why was she studying this woman’s name and face for so long? Was she buying time? Just give me a fucking answer. Who is she?
I studied Ashley’s reaction. She finally squinted her eyes as if trying to place this woman’s face. She shrugged, “I… I… I don’t know her,”
“She called you her abuser,” I said.
“People change,” Ashley whispered.
“What was that? Did you say people change? So you do know her?” Her comment suggested she knew exactly who this person was.
I watched Ashley’s brown eyes turn black as if injected with a needle filled with ink. I knew what was coming next.
“NO, I DON’T! I TOLD YOU WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU EVER QUESTIONED ME AGAIN! I WILL END THIS RIGHT NOW! I DON’T FUCKING KNOW HER, AND IT’S PROBABLY SOMEONE WHO WENT TO COLLEGE WITH MY EX-WIFE! AND NOW SHE’S MAD WE ARE IN NEW YORK, AND SHE’LL DO ANYTHING TO LIE AND MAKE ME LOOK BAD!”
Ashley yelled so loudly I wondered if Perci heard her all the way back in Los Angeles.
Mom’s in danger.
She flung her suitcase onto the bed while I stood still in the middle of the room. I was the eye of the storm, and Ashley was the hurricane around me.
In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet, for just a moment, a yellow sky.
Her screams intensified as she stomped back and forth, throwing all of her belongings into her suitcase. Was this abuse?
“Why did you say people change if you’ve never met her?” I asked quietly, hoping it would signal her to lower her voice.
“IF YOU WANT TO BELIEVE THESE PEOPLE THAT’S ON YOU! AND YOU’RE FALLING RIGHT INTO THEIR TRAP! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO HAPPEN. THEY WANT YOU TO BREAK UP WITH ME!”
I wish she came with a volume dial, she was somehow getting louder.
“YOU KNOW WHAT– RESPOND TO HER AND GET HER PHONE NUMBER! I’LL CALL HER RIGHT NOW! BETTER YET, I’LL HAVE MY LAWYERS SEND HER A CEASE AND DESIST! THIS IS HARASSMENT! THIS IS SLANDER! THIS IS DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER! GET ME HER NUMBER!”
I wasn’t going to respond to this woman. And I definitely wasn’t going to give Ashley her phone number just in case Ashley was her abuser. I hated this, and I felt sick from reading her messages. My head was pounding and I needed an Ashley strength anti-migraine pill.
“Okay, okay. I believe that you don’t know her,” I lied. “I just need you to calm down for a second.”
I remembered the last time Ashley had a meltdown of this magnitude. Her Mom called me The Ashley Whisperer as if she were a wild stallion, and I was a small mute girl who could tame Ashley with my mind. God, I’m such a horse girl, even with humans.
Ashley fell onto the bed and started sobbing. Her entire body shook and heaved with such force it felt like we were in Los Angeles and experiencing The Big One. All I wanted was for her to lower her volume and not get us kicked out and banned from the Citizen Hotel.
I sat beside her and rubbed her back as she cried. “Just take some deep breaths,” I said.
We sat like that for half an hour. When she finally looked up at me, her eyes were bloodshot, and it looked like she had busted a capillary in one of them. An epically long booger dangled down her face, past her chin. I wiped it off with my hand and then wiped my hand onto her pants.
We both laughed.
“Are you better?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“You know you can tell me the truth, even if it’s something bad or embarrassing. I won’t judge you. And I won’t get mad. I just want you to be honest with me.”
“I am telling the truth. I don’t know her. You have to block her, or she’ll keep doing this. She’ll never stop until you leave me,” her chin and lip quivered, and at that moment, I wanted to hand her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Because suddenly, I believed her. Her reaction was so extreme that she had to be telling the truth. There was passion behind it. And she even encouraged me to write this woman back. And who knows, maybe I’d react that way, too, if I were ever falsely accused of murder and sitting in the electric chair and they were about to crank the nozzle. Actually, probably not.
“I believe you, but I’m not blocking her because then she’ll know I saw her messages.” I said. “And I’d rather stay completely out of this.”
“I can handle that, so you’ll just ignore her?”
“Yeah, I’ll ignore her.”
“I just don’t want her to destroy what we have. You mean too much to me. These people are deranged. They’ll say anything.”
“Well, what do you want to do about Cecelia and all her friends who are lurking at my stories? Would you feel better if I blocked them?”
“You’d do that for me?” she whimpered.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’d do that for anyone.”
I pulled up my Instagram story, showing a long list of viewers. I handed Ashley my phone.
“Here,” I said, “let’s have a block party.”
I poured myself a glass of wine while Ashley scrolled through my story. She blocked at least ten different accounts that I saw. Then, I blocked Cecelia’s Finstas (Fake Instagrams, for all you boomers). Knowing Ashley’s baby mama was watching my stories, I had been sending Cecelia subliminal messages through them — like, hey, I’m not a bad person — here’s a picture of a book I’m reading, and here I am watching Improvised Shakespeare, and now I’m at a restaurant feeding my dog french fries under the table. I didn’t know what she thought of me, but I knew I wasn’t a villain or a psychopath, and I tried to make that loud and clear to her in case I met their children one day.
“Better?” I asked Ashley.
Ashley nodded and wiped the tears from her eyes, and returned to normal, whatever that meant for her. We got ready for bed. I had nothing left. Ashley’s blow-up drained me.
With my head finally resting on a pillow and Ashley in the shower, I looked through this mystery woman’s Twitter, because when I told Ashley I believed her, what I really meant was I needed to do some detective work.
I scrolled through her timeline. A wedding photo with her husband on their anniversary. Straight. Lots of sports talk. Lesbian? She also had a cat. Maybe she was bi. Or, maybe she used to be gay but had such a horrible experience dating Ashley it scared her straight? My brain was depleted of rational thoughts.
I scrolled through my emails, and that’s when I saw more messages sent by the same woman, but to the LinkedIn account I never used. She said she was messaging me there because Ashley would probably make me block her on Twitter. Accurate, Ashley begged me to block her. But I didn’t.
I didn’t have any answers for her. I didn’t know these people. I didn’t want any part of whatever was happening. All I wanted was to enjoy my trip to New York City without any drama — or maybe just a dash of drama because it makes me feel alive.
I didn’t tell Ashley about the LinkedIn messages because one explosion was enough for the night. But I thought her Mom should know what was happening, so I sent Stacey screenshots of the woman’s messages claiming Ashley was her abuser. I thought I was doing the right thing since Stacey and Ashley were so close. And if Ashley had another freakout, at least her Mom would have context as to why.
Stacey texted me back, defending Ashley. She then added another conspiracy as to who might be behind these messages: Ashley’s brother and his wife.
I knew that Ashley wasn’t close to her brother. They had a falling out around the same time she and I started talking. She told me her brother was mad because she made so much money and called her an entitled elitist. When she arrived at her parents’ house in Bakersfield, he had sent her a book on communism and demanded she read it, or he’d never speak to her again.
I understood their strained relationship because I hadn’t talked to my own brother in years. We had vastly different political beliefs, and it drove us apart. In late 2017 he took to the family group chat and accused me of publicly bad-mouthing the President of the United States of America. And I responded, “You mean the dumb orange man? I haven’t insulted that cock-sucking vile pig even once.” And then we went years without speaking.
Ashley was still in the shower, and I noticed her phone sticking out from underneath her folded pajama pants on the table. I snuck over and pressed the screen to see what would pop up. She had twenty-two new messages from Cecelia. I didn’t know Ashley’s password, but I wouldn’t have read them even if I did. That would be crossing the line. Her screen lit up several more times in rapid succession. Cecelia. Cecelia. Cecelia. Cecelia.
I barely noticed the shower had turned off, and I dove head-first back into bed. God dammit, I wanted to know what her messages were saying. What was Cecelia going on about? Ashley walked over to her pajamas and picked up her phone. She briefly looked at her screen and casually put it back down, as if she didn’t have a million new notifications screaming for her attention.
I wanted to know more about Cecelia, but I’d have to save my questions for another day.
Ahhhh need the next chapter!!
Two things:
1. If you weren’t narrating this and I was reading it from a third-person perspective I’d be convinced you didn’t make it out alive.
2. I’m shocked and appalled that Kinzey grew up to be a Trumper