The Lies I Tell(5)

It took an hour of driving aimlessly before my hands stopped shaking, before my heart stopped pounding, and I shuddered to think what would have happened if he’d gotten in. I kept imagining scenarios, each one more horrific than the last. A hand over my mouth. Being driven to a deserted location. Being dragged into a ditch.

My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep as I reread my dating profile, where only my name and age were true. Meg Williams, age 21. Profession: Marketing. Likes: live music, dining out, travel. I love to laugh and am always looking for adventure! Age range: 18–35. Looking for fun, not marriage. That last part was the line that kept me fed. I managed to get at least three dates a week, and I pushed hard for dinner and not coffee. When you live in a car, the last thing you need is more liquid. I said yes to every invitation, and I became a master of flirty online banter, giving the illusion that good things might happen after a sit-down dinner that included cloth napkins, appetizers, and a dessert menu.

A minimum of three dates a week saved me at least $50, money I’d hoped would grow until I had enough to afford a place to live. But something always set me back. Car registration. Rising gas prices. A parking ticket.

And so, on that rainy October afternoon, I finally gave up and admitted to myself I needed more than just a one-night reprieve every few days. I needed a safe place to live, and someone willing to give it to me. I wouldn’t find that from the men on my screen, all of whom were in their twenties and thirties. They were interested in casual dates. Hookups with no strings. Not an instant, live-in girlfriend.

I was going to have to go older.

I clicked over to my settings and slid the age range from thirty-five to forty. Would that be old enough? Forty-year-old women were over the hill, but men had longer shelf life.

“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath and slid it up to fifty-five.

I thought back to my mother, a beautiful woman who had insisted on doing everything for herself, making my childhood ten times harder than it needed to be. She never accepted help when it was offered, and because there always seemed to be some poor fool in love with her, it was offered frequently. She said no when one of them wanted to buy me new shoes or to pay for a week at summer camp. She declined offers of a place to live when we needed one. Car repairs. An occasional meal at a nice restaurant or a day at Disneyland. It wasn’t like I wanted her to sell herself. Just agree every now and then to things that would have made our lives a little better.

But she believed women should stand on their own. She wanted to find a true partner, not a handout. She thought she’d found that partnership with Ron Ashton, never seeing the rotten core of him until it was too late.

A new page began to load profiles of men two or three times my age, many of them completely gray, and my breath hitched as I imagined sitting across a table from one of them, faking an attraction I was never going to feel.

I clicked through profiles, one by one. Too old. Too creepy. Usually, when I hit on a potential date, I’d try to find something we had in common, and if I couldn’t, I’d make it up. I love Steely Dan! A quick Google search would bring up their concert schedule. I even went to Vegas to catch their show last August. Epic! At the end of the night, if the guy seemed nice enough, it didn’t matter what the truth was.

But the men on my screen now were from another generation altogether. Any personal connection with them would likely involve Barry Manilow and a deep affection for Tom Brokaw.

I took a sip from my hot chocolate, flipped to the next profile, and nearly choked when I saw the face on the screen. “Oh my god.”

Cory Dempsey. Mr. Dempsey, math teacher at my former high school. His blue eyes were just as vibrant on the screen as I remembered them, with that same unruly brown hair curling around his ears. The girls loved him, and the boys wanted to be him. His profile listed his age as forty-eight, but he’d always seemed younger—more like the students than the other teachers. Engaging and energetic, always voted the most popular teacher by the senior class, including mine.

But great teaching wasn’t why people whispered about him. In the girls’ bathroom, in the corners of the cafeteria, on the bleachers at the football game.

Mr. Dempsey is so hot.

After math class, Mr. Dempsey was totally flirting with me. I bet I could have made a move.

Ohmygod, please. You’re not special, he flirts with everyone.

I read through his profile again. Cory Dempsey. Profession: High School Principal.

Status: Single, never been married.

Likes: Basketball, fantasy football, surfing, inspiring the youth of today to become their very best selves.

Of course, Kristen came to mind immediately. We weren’t exactly friends—she was popular, and I was just the nobody who sat next to her in English class. But she’d always included me in group projects, and made sure to say hi in the hallways while everyone else’s eyes slid right over me, as if I were invisible.

To them, I’d been The Bag Lady because of the reusable grocery bag I used to carry my books, never able to justify the cost of a backpack. But Kristen had always defended me. “Don’t be an asshole,” she said once to Robbie Maxon. “Last week I saw you pick your nose in chem lab.”

She’d pulled the conversation away from me, directed it so masterfully that no one noticed me slip away, my heavy grocery bag cutting into my shoulder, grateful for her kindness.

“Why are you so nice to me?” I’d asked her once. We’d been alone in the bathroom, shoulder to shoulder at the sinks, me washing my hands while she applied lip gloss. Her eyes met mine in the mirror and she said, “It’s the girl code. We have to look out for each other because no one else will.”