Trashley: Forty
White Italian Leather Shoes
I texted Cecelia after reading the e-mail she sent me recounting her experience with Ashley over the year in which Ashley and I had dated. Until then, I didn’t know her side of the story, and Ashley and her family tried hard to keep it that way. When Cecelia reached out to me the previous summer, she told me Ashley didn’t go to MIT, wasn’t a physicist, and said her family would lie for her. And sho’ nuf, they did. Everything Cecelia had said was true. At the time, Ashley and her mom had told me to block Cecelia and then called her a liar and a gold digger. Now I realized they were the liars and gold diggers. And I was the gold mine.
Ashley’s entire family had encouraged her affair with me, all the while gaslighting Cecelia into thinking Ashley was with them in Bakersfield when she was living with me in Los Angeles.
I thought back to the party we went to in Bakersfield for Stacey’s co-worker and how ridiculous she sounded when she introduced Ashley and me to people with “MIT-MTV-MIT-MTV.”
Dumbass.
I tried to go to sleep but couldn’t. Not when I wanted to crack myself open like a pinata and pour all my contents out to Cecelia. For the next few hours, I bombarded her with texts.
I told her that I’d met Ashley on Hinge in mid-February 2021. Ashley had said she lived in downtown LA but was in Chicago working at a lab. We didn’t meet in person until April, when her sisters and dad drove halfway to LA so I could pick her up. I told Cecelia how Ashley had lied to me about her grandparents dying within a day of each other. I told her how Ashley had begged me to take her to Alaska, so we went, and she met my family. I told Cecelia about everything Ashley bought me— the expensive jewelry, an iPad, a MacBook Pro, an Apple Watch, a new iPhone, a Remarkable Tablet, a vacuum, a SMEG coffee maker, a camera, and a Frame TV. I told Cecilia about the thirty-thousand-dollar check I got from her company for writing five tweets. And the five thousand dollar check I got for finding a writer.
Then, she responded.
“I can’t sleep either.”
Cecelia and I texted until ten thirty the next morning.
“The grandparents' story is about my Mom’s parents. I was close with them, and they died within a day of each other,” Cecelia said before sending me a link to their obituaries. “She told Gina the same story. Ashley pretended they died in the first two weeks they started talking.”
“What’s the story with Gina?” I asked.
“They met on Hinge in December, and then in January, Ashley told me she was driving to her co-worker’s house in Michigan and kept insisting she was there. But I checked her car mileage, and things didn’t add up. I found a charge for Malibu Seafood and realized she hopped on a flight to LA.”
“True detective work. I wouldn’t have thought to look at the car mileage.”
“After that, I found her Apple Watch and discovered who Gina was from there.”
“Jesus. Did Ashley tell Gina she was a physicist, too?” I asked.
“Yeah, Gina got the same story as you did. Lying about going to MIT, being a professor, pretending to be single and childless, the whole thing.”
“Did she always want to be a scientist or something?”
“No. Before she met Gina, she started ordering all of this MIT stuff on Amazon. At first, I thought she was cheating on me with a physicist, which would’ve made sense given her sudden fascination. But she was pretending to be a physicist.”
“Did she admit to being in Alaska?” I asked.
“No, she told me she was in Michigan for an entire month for work. But I knew she was lying. I saw her shoe in one of your photos.”
I knew exactly what photo it was—a little Easter egg. I pulled it up. There it was: an unmistakable white Italian leather shoe.
“We went to Bakersfield a lot. Did you know I was there?”
“Yeah, I knew because they always Facetimed us from her parent’s bedroom instead of the living room. She also sent me a photo from the backyard with Perci’s foot in the shot.” Cecelia texted me the photo.
There it was: Perci’s unmistakable white Italian leather foot.
“God, she’s sloppy. And why does she always say she’s talking to her Dad about slavery? She’s so stupid.”
I told Cecelia that I kept detailed journals documenting the entire relationship. And as luck would have it, so did she. Cecelia had written down everything that happened on her end and we compared notes.
“What did you guys do on the day of our anniversary?” Cecelia asked.
I flipped through my journal, “It says here that Ashley picked a fight with me out of nowhere. I was about to start a therapy session. She stormed out of my apartment. Then she turned her location off and disappeared for five hours. She returned with a new iPad for me, even though I just bought one, and said she took her location off because she didn’t want me to see she was going to Best Buy. What do you got?”
Cecelia read off her notes.
“Ashley was still lying about being in Michigan for work, but I knew she was in LA. She Facetimed me from a hotel room. I’m sure it was the Burbank Marriott because we had stayed there before, and the room looked the same. We watched RuPaul’s Drag Race together for a few hours, and then she said she had to sleep early because she had a big meeting in the morning.”
“My god. I can’t believe she rented a hotel room to Facetime you. No wonder she turned her location off.”
“She did it several times while you guys were together.”
Everything Cecelia said was shocking. Ashley did all of this right in front of me and I had no idea. I felt like one of those women who finds out they were married to a serial killer.
“So you’re telling me my husband chopped up sex workers and threw them into the ocean? That explains why he was out all night and came home soaked in blood.”
“She told me you stayed at the neighbor’s place when she visited, and you guys weren’t allowed to be in the house together. And that you could only communicate through lawyers.”
“I was always at the house,” Cecelia said. “I would see her sneak away to call you. She changed your contact name on her phone to her mom’s name in case I saw you had texted.”
I couldn’t imagine how much energy Ashley poured into maintaining her double life.
“When did she finally admit that we were dating?” I asked.
“Not until two months ago, so January,” she said. “You were in LA, and she would call me from Bakersfield every night, wanting to talk on the phone for hours. She told me she was ending things with you. And said you paid for everything, like the trips and dinners. And that she couldn’t have sex because of some medicine she was on.”
I almost choked, laughing.
“She is so dumb. First of all, she wanted to have sex all the time, to the point that it became annoying and I tried to avoid her. And second, why would she tell you I paid for everything? She spent so much money all the time.”
“Any money she spent on her affair would be considered marital waste, which would not be good for her in the divorce.”
“Gotcha,” I said, “Well I’m happy to provide proof of everything if you need it.”
“Thanks. I’m almost afraid to find out how much money she spent.”
After seeing the IRS letters and missed payments, I thought Ashley would be in the hole for the rest of her life. A small part of me felt bad for her, she was fucked from the beginning. Her parents totally failed her.
“Question: when we went to Jacksonville, did she admit to being there?”
“Nope. I knew she was there, but she told me she was flying to Nashville for work.”
“Wow, Jacksonville, Nashville. She does word associations to keep her lies straight.”
“Exactly. Within the lie is a little shred of truth.”
“She told me your dog was on a road trip with her friend Colin, but he had to turn around and return to Chicago.”
“Another example, she doesn’t have a friend named Colin, but both of our names start with a C. Colin… Cecelia… Just a tiny minuscule ounce of truth to keep the lie straight. And our dog has always been with me. She never went on a road trip.”
Cecelia and I spent the afternoon comparing notes.
We also shared our locations since we knew Ashley couldn’t control her rage, and we needed to know the other was safe. As much as I wanted to tell Ashley to fuck all the way off to the most distant planet, I couldn’t end things while she was in Minnesota. It would be dangerous if she got upset around her kids.
Kirsten came over again to get her daily dose of Ashley’s demise. Besides Kirsten, my little sisters’ were the only other people who knew Ashley was both a catfish and a liar. After hearing about Ashley’s rage in Big Bear, they were scared for my safety.
My sister Jordan sent me a screenshot of an Instagram message Ashley sent her. She was asking about which ring to get me for our anniversary.
I told Jordan not to respond.
No more would Ashley’s tricks keep me from breaking up with her.
I looked around at my life. What the hell? My living room had become an evidence room, my journals were spread across my dining table, and I was getting texts from my girlfriend and my girlfriend’s wife. It was starting to feel like I was also living a double life.
My brain dinged again—the Universe had sent me a new e-mail. It said, “Lauren, you should start recording your conversations with Ashley. Just in case she tries to pull a fast one or get revenge on you after the breakup.”
Thank you, Universe.
That’s a great idea.
One spoiler— Cecelia is not Ashley, she is a real person.
BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DRIVE WITH ALL YOUR DATA? Dangling from the edge of my seat here, and not just because a chonky cat is taking up 90% of it.