Cecelia and I were in constant contact while Ashley was in Minnesota. We shared notes, journals, texts, photos, facts, and the one thing Ashley was incapable of sharing: the truth.
Since meeting, Ashley had been leading a double life: lying to Cecelia about dating me and living with me in Los Angeles. And lying to me about being a divorced physicist. Talking with Cecelia felt like untangling a necklace. We worked together to unravel Ashley’s lies and piece together what had actually happened to us.
Until we began communicating, I had no idea how horrible Ashley treated Cecelia. There’s only one type of girl I don’t like, and that’s a mean girl. Ashley, her mom, and her sister Claudia could have taught at the Bakersfield campus of Mean Girl University, where Ashley would have also minored in FiZziKs.
Cecelia was nothing like the person Ashley or her family had described. I found her calm, warm, and kind. For months, Ashley’s family had dragged her through the dirt, and I wanted to do what I could to protect her from them. So I gave her proof of Ashley’s spending so she could use it as evidence during their impending divorce.
I pictured Ashley’s mom and her mini-me, Claudia, sitting around their living room, slurping diet cokes and snarfing Del Taco, congratulating each other for lying to a pregnant woman.
So proud.
So untouchable.
They made me sick, and I couldn’t believe I had been on the wrong side of good for an entire year.
“Did Ashley buy a place in San Francisco during the Pandemic?” I asked Cecelia.
“Nope. She never bought a place in San Francisco, and she never lived there.”
“She told me she still had one point five million dollars from the sale of her SF apartment.”
Cecelia laughed.
I continued, “And her mom even said, ‘You should’ve seen Ashley’s San Francisco apartment. She has excellent taste,’ and she said you were trying to get Ashley’s money from the sale of that place.”
“Lies, all of it.” Cecelia said,” There was never an apartment.”
Ashley’s lies were bottomless, like the bread at Olive Garden. And I doubted she had told me anything true over the entire year we dated.
I was still pretending things were fine between us when Ashley called, but it was getting harder to keep up the facade. Ashley had already stolen a year of my time and energy, and those were things I’d never get back. I wished there was a way to take a year off of Ashley’s life so I could add it to Perci’s so something good could come of it.
She still had no idea I’d been talking with Cecelia, and every time we caught up, her lies continued. Ashley told me she had accidentally called her baby “Perci” and it caused a huge fight. Of course when I fact-checked this with Cecelia, she confirmed it never happened.
Ashley lied so fluently, she could’ve added it to the curriculum at her Bakersfield campus of Mean Girl University.
Ashley must have sensed me pulling away because she started sending me messages about how I still gave her butterflies and saying she wanted to make travel plans for the summer.
“Ashley keeps talking about going to Berlin next month,” I told Cecelia.
“She’s future faking. Classic Ashley.”
“What’s future faking?” I asked because I’m dumb.
“She did it with your trip to Europe,” she explained. “She led you into thinking you’d go on this elaborate vacation and had no intention of going. She knew she had to give you something to look forward to.”
“She told me we had to cancel our trip because Covid protocols were too strict.”
“No, she never planned on going. She couldn’t afford a trip like that.”
“What the fuck, I spent real money on that trip. I lost out on thousands of dollars.”
“I saw the tickets you gave away on Twitter,” she said. “Yeah, she was never going to go. Future faking.”
Every time I thought I knew all the lies, another one revealed itself.
I was gathering all of Ashley’s stuff to put in her car when someone knocked on my door. My stomach tensed, I was afraid Ashley learned how to be in two places at the same time. Fortuntately, it was the UPS guy. I’d never been so happy to see a man in my life. He handed me a package.
Nervously, I opened it: Ashley had overnighted a twenty-four hundred dollar Australian opal ring from Jaime Joseph. This was too much. I hated that Ashley was spending thousands of dollars to lovebomb me when I had just found out her finances were in ruins, and she should be putting that money towards Cecelia and the children. I texted her, pretending to love it, but it made me sick.
Ashley Facetimed me once she had delivery confirmation. She said, “Happy anniversary babe.”
I thanked her for the ring, despite knowing I would sell it and offer the proceeds to Cecelia, along with the rest of the jewelry Ashley had purchased for me. And every time I offered the jewelry money to Cecelia, she declined. Because she was never about the money. Not once. Not ever.
I said, “I don’t think I can keep this. You shouldn’t be spending this kind of money on me. You should return this.”
“Why? Why would I do that?” she asked.
“Because, I don’t think you have as much money as you say you do.”
“What are you talking about? I have plenty of money. Plenty of money for my needs.”
“This ring is too much,” I said.
“Are you breaking up with me?” she asked, her eyes watering.
“Ashley, you’ve lied to me so much. I can’t be with someone I don’t trust.” I hadn’t meant to say that, but the truth had slipped out anyway. And the timing could not have been worse because Ashley was alone at the house, with her kids, while Cecelia was out running errands.
Ashley started wailing. Her screams pierced my ears.
“Ashley, you have to calm down, you’re scaring the kids,” I said. “Please, stop screaming!”
I texted Cecelia, “Ashley is losing it in front of the kids, it’s really bad, you need to get to the house immediately.”
Cecelia dropped everything she was doing and rushed home. I tried to talk Ashley down, but that just made her more hysterical.
“You can’t break up with me, nooooooo. I never lied to you!”
“You lied to me about everything Ashley. You are not a Physicist. You didn’t go to MIT.”
“YES I DID!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I went there, I took a class there!”
“No you didn’t,” I repeated.
“Yes I did, I lived on campus!”
“You did not live on campus. Maybe you took some remote online course or something, but you never went there.”
“It was remote,” she said.
“You told me you were on the MIT sailing team,” I said.
“I never said that! I said I was on rec-league.”
“Ashley, I have the texts. Stop lying!”
Telling Ashley to stop lying was like telling the wind not to blow. She couldn’t do it to save her life.
“You never bought an apartment in San Francisco.”
“YES I DID!”
“No, Ashley, you didn’t. And what’s the deal with Gina? Tell me how you met.”
“Gina and I worked together for years, and there was always this unspoken chemistry between us. When Cecelia and I got divorced, Gina and I started dating.”
“Nope. Try again.”
“I’m telling the truth! We dated for several years and bought the apartment together in San Francisco.”
“Nope, try again, Ashley.”
“That’s what happened, I swear!”
“Ashley, I know you met Gina on Hinge last December and talked for like six weeks. You are incapable of telling the truth!”
“I’M NOT LYING!” she screeched.
I hoped Cecelia would return soon. Ashley’s meltdoown, in front her her kids, scared me.
“Are you okay, mama?” her daughter asked, coming over to comfort Ashley.
God, I felt so sad that these sweet children had to see this.
Ashley sobbed, and her daughter hugged her.
I looked at Cecelia’s location, she was pulling up to the house.
“I’m coming back there,” Ashley said, “I’m going to fix this. We can fix this.”
“No, Ashley, we can’t.”
“I’m going there tomorrow,” she said as she hung up.
Cecelia texted twenty minutes later.
“She was crying. She told me she just found out her Grandma was sick, and that she has to fly to Bakersfield immediately. She left for her apartment.”
Ashley called again from her apartment.
”I need to go to a hospital, I need to check in somewhere. You can’t do this, you can’t break up with me.”
”If you need to check in somewhere then please go. I don’t know what else to do. You need to get yourself together. Your kids need you, but you have to get your head right.”
There was no talking Ashley down. She screamed and yelled and hung up on me.
I felt hopeless.
I texted her Mom, not knowing what else to do.
Her Mom assured me Ashley was okay despite it being obvious that she wasn’t.
That night I checked Ashley’s location on my phone. She had driven to a pond, it was late at night, and I had no idea what she was doing but it scared me, so I called her.
”What are you doing at that pond? What is happening right now?” I asked.
”I bought a gun at a thrift store. And now I’m sitting here with the gun.”
“Ashley, you need to stop. This is not okay. Are you going to hurt yourself? I’m going to call the police.”
“I’m not going to hurt myself! Stop talking to my mom and stop saying you’ll call the police! I’m just sitting here, hurting.”
”Do you really have a gun?”
“It’s at the apartment, in a box in my closet.”
“You just told me you had it with you.”
“I do.”
“I can’t tell if you are lying or telling the truth. Do you have a gun with you right this second?”
“No,” she said.
“This is all really draining,” I said, “I’m exhausted.”
“I’m flying home to you in the morning. I’m going to fix this. We love each other.”
I hated this.
Kirsten came over that night, and I told her my plan for the morning: I would pack Ashley’s stuff into her Tesla, and when she arrived, I’d tell her this was over and she had to leave. I also told her about the gun Ashley said she had purchased.
“Do you think she’s going to try to hurt herself?” I asked.
“No. I think she’s going to pretend to try to hurt herself. You should hide all of your knives and scissors, anything that could be used as a weapon,” Kirsten said.
I couldn’t imagine Ashley truly hurting herself, but I still hid all my knives in a drawer beside my bed. I hid my sword and machete behind the couch. I put my switchblade in the water holder of my Peloton. And I took Lil’ Knifey, the four-inch knife I carry everywhere, out of my purse and stuffed it in my hiking shoe.
The next morning, I pulled Ashley’s Tesla in front of my apartment and loaded all of her stuff inside. When I did one last sweep of my apartment, I found a four hundred-dollar winning scratch-off lotto ticket we had won a few weeks earlier. I thought about cashing it and sending the money to Cecelia, but I put it in with Ashley’s belongings instead because I felt sad for her, too. She was cruel and manipulative, but she was still a person—her own worst enemy—but something had made her this way. Maybe it was her mom. Maybe it was something else. I had no idea. All I knew was that four hundred dollars wouldn’t solve all her problems, but in some small way, I hoped the gesture would help.
“Landed,” Ashley texted me.
“Can I get you an Uber?” I asked.
“In the car.”
I watched Ashley’s little red dot get closer to my apartment.
I heard the voice of Mr. Scott, my old Karate teacher in my head, telling me to stay alert and never take my eyes off my opponent. Ashley had no idea she was fucking with a yellow belt who had trained intensely, once a week, during all of fifth grade.
I hoped she would let me let her go without a fuss, but I also knew that wasn’t how she rolled.
FUCK!
You can write a cliffhanger like nobody's business
“FiZziKs”. 😂😂😂