The Rules of Dating(16)
I nodded. “I get it. I don’t have the best track record with relationships myself.”
“Oh yeah? You want to go toe to toe? See who has the worst relationship story?”
“Sure.” I smiled and lifted my chin. “Ladies first.”
“Welp, I guess my worst relationship would be Lucas. We met when I was twenty and backpacking through Australia. I’d just finished my tattoo apprenticeship and decided to take a month off before I began working full time as an artist. I love to travel—that’s probably the one thing my mother and I have in common—so I flew to Melbourne and started to work my way up the Great Ocean Road. I met Lucas at Bells Beach, the place where they have the big annual surfing contest. I was there early one morning, watching the sun come up, and he walked up with his board and offered to teach me to surf. Long story short, we spent the next five weeks together, traveling all over Australia. Lucas was from California, he worked in Silicon Valley, and he told me he’d recently sold an app for twenty-million dollars, so he was taking a break to figure out what he should do next. When it was time for me to return to New York and start my new position as a full-fledged tattoo artist, Lucas came home with me. I was head over heels, and I thought he was, too.”
I nodded. This story already made my stomach turn.
“Anyway,” she said, “Lucas and I moved in together. We soon realized my apartment was too small for two, so we signed a lease for a great place I could never have afforded on my own, got a joint bank account where he parked his spending money—over two-hundred-thousand dollars—and I was happier than I’d ever been. I had the guy of my dreams and had just started a job I absolutely loved. I even introduced him to my mother, and we were planning a trip out to California so I could meet his family. While we were there, he was going to pack up and bring the rest of his things to New York. Things were going great…until I came home from work one day and everything of value was gone from my apartment. And our joint bank account, which had also held sixty-thousand dollars of an inheritance I received when my grandmother died—was empty too.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “Jesus Christ. I’m sorry, Billie. What happened after that?”
She shrugged. “I went to the police. Turned out the guy was a known scammer and had done it to others. But he hops around from country to country, so he hasn’t gotten caught. Not that I would expect him to have any of my money left. He spent cash as if he actually had twenty million in the bank.”
Billie gulped down the rest of her drink and pointed to me. “Your turn. I’m guessing this is one contest I’ll win. I haven’t even known you that long, and I know you wouldn’t do something so stupid.”
I shook my finger back and forth. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Don’t assume this pretty face has a matching set of brains. I’ve done my share of dumb shit.”
Billie leaned back in her chair and folded her hands behind her head. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Well, in the end, my outcome is better. But I’ve definitely led with my head in the past.” I pointed to the one on top of my shoulders. “Just not always this one.”
Telling this story required some liquid courage, so now I emptied my cup. “Almost five years ago, I met a woman named Raven. Because I’m apparently cliché as fuck with more than just my choice of tattoos, Raven was a stripper, and I met her at a strip club—on Halloween of all days. I was out with my buddies, got to talking with one of the women after the show, and wound up taking Raven home with me. She left the next morning, and I never heard from her again—until August of the next year, when she showed up on my doorstep with a five-week-old baby.”
Billie’s eyes grew as wide as saucers. “No way!”
I nodded. “Yep. She told me it was my kid, and that she had a job interview she couldn’t miss and no one to watch the baby. She pretty much said three sentences, set the baby carrier and a diaper bag down in the doorway, and turned around and took off. I stood there shell-shocked for a minute, but then ran after her. Two buildings down, I realized I’d just left a baby alone in my apartment, so I ran back.”
“What did you do when she came back?”
I looked Billie in the eyes. “I’ll let you know when that happens.”
“Oh my God, Colby. Are you saying Saylor’s mother left her on your doorstep and you never saw her again?”
I nodded. “To be honest, I wasn’t even sure the baby was mine at first. I had no idea what to do. I’d never changed a diaper in my life.”
“Did you try to find her?”
I nodded again. “For a long time. But the only thing I knew about her was that she worked at the strip club. Of course I went back there, but the manager said she hadn’t worked there in six months. I went as far as hiring a private investigator to track her down, but she was nowhere to be found. Turned out Raven wasn’t even her name, it was Maya, and she wasn’t in the country legally, so the paper trail was pretty scarce.”
Billie shook her head. “Holy crap. That’s crazy.”
“Do I win?”
She laughed. “I think you might.”
“Then I guess I win twice. Because Saylor turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me. My crazy story might beat your crazy story, but in the end, I got the love of my life.”