Page 72 of Never Let Go

I lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Well, not exactly this, but it was similar enough. He set me up back in college, too.”

“Oh no,” she muttered. “How?”

I hung my head, thinking back to the previous time when I’d thought that we were such a perfect match and that we were finally going to be together. “One night, he asked me to meet him at Mountain View.”

She gave me a blank stare. “What’s Mountain View?”

“It’s this hill on campus with a great view of the mountains. What can I say? College kids aren’t exactly creative in naming things.”

She chuckled, but I could already see the sympathy softening her eyes. “This was a make-out spot for you guys?”

I nodded. “Sort of. Make-out spot. Perfect-date spot. It’s romantic, you know? It’s dark on that part of campus at night with only the moon and stars above, but anyway, I got all excited. The whole week before that, he’d been asking me about my dream date. Every time he saw me, he had another question. Locations. Drinks. Food. Even flowers.”

Ashley grimaced. “You assumed he was planning a date for you?”

My cheeks flushed as I nodded. “Yeah, I did. When he asked me to meet him there that night, I got ready, like, two hours before we were supposed to meet even though it was only a fifteen-minute walk from our dorm.”

“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” She slung an arm around my shoulders, setting down the cardboard food container to comfort me instead. “What happened?”

“I got there, but it turned out that the date wasn’t for me. He’d planned the whole thing for some other girl and he wanted me to check it out before she got there to make sure he’d gotten it right.”

She groaned and hugged me tighter. “You felt like an idiot for arriving all starry-eyed and dressed up?”

“I really did. He even noticed. His eyes got all big and he asked me if I thought this was all for me. I lied and said no, but I think he knew.”

“So you think this was him fooling you again?” she asked quietly.

I nodded. “That night, he laughed and pretended to wipe his brow like he was all relieved that there hadn’t been a misunderstanding, but he thought it was so freaking funny. Like it was the best joke in the world that I’d think he was asking me out.”

Ashley sighed and hugged me some more, only releasing me when we both went back to our food for a few minutes. Eventually, once we’d eaten way too much, she looked back at me and shot me an apologetic smile.

“Okay, look, I know you’re feeling like this was some continuation of that joke. I also know now why you felt like a fool, but what did he really do wrong this time? He didn’t lead you on again, although I have to admit it sounds like he did just that before.”

“Yeah, he really did. He explained it after by saying that I was his only female friend and that he’d needed feminine advice, but it just hadn’t felt like that to me.”

“So maybe he’s a bit of an idiot himself.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. “Guys can be so damn blind like that sometimes, but you two obviously like each other and you have to be a good match if Sight Unseen set you up.”

“We don’t know if Sight Unseen set us up, though.” I paused and then motioned to her phone. “Pull up their website. I checked. That is the company he works for. He knew it was me all along.”

“That’s the thing, Shelby. We don’t know that he did. Maybe he was just another single guy in Seattle who signed up looking for love. In fact, if he works there, it makes even more sense why he’d choose them to sign up with. He’s obviously seen how successful they are for himself.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I don’t believe that. He lied to me.”

“Did he though?” she asked gently. “Honestly, the whole Sight Unseen model is based on deception to a certain extent, isn’t it? People use fake names. Fake jobs. The only thing we know for sure is that he works there. We don’t know that he knew it was you or that he set out to fool you again.”

“According to him, he didn’t set out to fool me before either,” I said miserably, shaking my head. “If he wanted to go out with me, why didn’t he just ask me out in real life? Why pretend to be Tyler?”

“That’s my point exactly, though. If he wanted to make a fool out of you, it would’ve been easier to just ask you in real life and set up a similar situation to before. He didn’t do that, though. He dated you in the dark for weeks. Did he ever make it sound like he knew who you were?”

“No.”

“Exactly. I don’t think he did know, babe. I think he works there. He’s just inherited a shit ton of money, and he was looking for love but didn’t want to have to question whether the woman wanted him for him or for his bank account.”

I didn’t have a response to any of that. All I knew was that I was still upset and that all of this had brought back too many hurtful memories from before. I wasn’t that hopeful, naïve college girl anymore, but I felt like her right then.

I felt like all the emotional growth and maturity that I’d gained over the years had been wiped away, sending me tumbling back to a time in my life I wasn’t particularly fond of. That night had made me so wary of men’s intentions that I’d made a fool of myself a bunch of times after by constantly questioning whether I understood them correctly.

Oh, are you asking me out on a date? That will be a date, right? Is this just, like, a coffee thing, or is it supposed to be a date?