First Date

    The next day at work, I slipped one of my cards with my number on it in *Rachel's mailbox.  I found out later that *Jack  went back to Rachel and told her he thought I was blowing him off. According to Jack, she called him and told him I had given her my number and that she didn’t think I was blowing him off. He called me either that evening or the next day to ask for a date.  He was going out of town that weekend to visit his mother but would be back Sunday and wanted to know if I would like to go out to dinner.  I said yes.

     Our first date was on a Sunday evening.  He took me to a nearby Chile’s restaurant…probably my suggestion as that is one of my favorite restaurants.  Our dinner date started a little late because he was running late getting back in town.  He kept apologizing.  I thought that was sweet, but it really made no difference to me.    I don’t remember what we talked about…probably all those “getting to know you” kind of things, but I remember there was a lot of conversation all through dinner and I enjoyed being with him.  When we got back to the apartment, he pulled out a single red rose before walking me to the door.  I  commented that it felt like my birthday had come a day early as the following day, Monday, was my birthday.  When I got home from work Monday, I found a card and balloons tied to my door.  The card said they were from Jack. I was very excited about the prospect of dating him and getting to know him better.

   It was all just typical first date stuff...both of us wanting to impress the other one...being on our best behavior.  There was no sign that this guy was capable of fantastic lies (big and small), and of conning and manipulating me. The lies came soon after and by the time "red flags" were waving, I was in love and ignored them.

  *names are changed