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He shook his head as Raul delivered his drink and let us know our food would be ready shortly. “Don’t. I didn’t care then, and I don’t now. It is what it is.”
Well, okay then.
Here I was, thinking that he’d be remorseful or mortified, but he wasn’t. His face was probably red from all the alcohol, not embarrassment, like I’d presumed.
“All right. Well, Chad here got famous on TikTok for dating a bunch of women at the same time and then ghosting them for no reason.”
“Wait. What’s ghosting again?” Carmella asked, her eyes pulled together. “When they disappear, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “It’s when a guy”—I looked pointedly at River—“or girl just basically drops off the face of the earth and never talks to you again after dating you. They ignore your calls, your texts, everything.”
“Why are you looking atmelike that?” River asked, and I figured it was obvious, considering that he’d done just that to Stacy after hooking up with her.
“Figured you were familiar with the term.”
“I obviously know what ghosting is,” he said before focusing on Chad, “but how’d you get ‘famous’ for that?” River made air quotes around the word, clearly not understanding the power of social media or a group of scorned women online who bonded over their mutual distaste for the same man.
“One girl posted about him on the app, and it went viral. Her comment section exploded with similar stories. Next thing you knew, there were literally hundreds of videos about Ice Cream Chad here and how he dated them for weeks before disappearing and never talking to them again.”
“But why the ice cream part?” Carmella shook her head, trying to figure out something that seemingly made no sense from the outside.
“Because that’s where I worked. At my family’s ice cream shop in the Hamptons.”
“You met a bunch of women at an ice cream shop?” River questioned, sounding more than a little skeptical.
“No. I met them online. But then I’d bring them all their favorite ice cream flavor from the store on our first date.” Chad sounded almost proud of himself, like he had been so clever to think of that little trick.
“You did the same thing for each woman?” River smacked the table with his hand, like this was too much for him to believe. “And you didn’t think you’d get caught?”
Chad shrugged a shoulder. “They were tourists. Only in town for a weekend or a week at a time. There’s so many people coming and going in the Hamptons in the summer. It’s a constant revolving door of hot, single women.”
“But everyone found out who you were and what you were doing.” I tried to remind him that his behavior hadn’t been cool then, and it certainly wasn’t cool now.
“Yeah. But by that point, I’d been doing it for two and a half summers. It was time to move on. Try something new.”
Chad had learned nothing from his online shaming. Men could be a pretty disappointing species at times, and Chad was living proof of that.
“So, one video ruined it all?” Carmella asked, still trying to connect all the dots.
I nodded. “That first video got a lot of attention, and it led to hundreds more. Girls were crying. Some were angry. Some were embarrassed. People started showing up at the ice cream shop, doing live video feeds, all in search of Chad,” I said, filling in more of the blanks because I had been super invested in the story for a while and knew way too much about it.
“They showed up, filming? Did anyone actually find you while they were doing that? What happened after?” Carmella finished off her wine, her focus solely on Chad, waiting for him to respond.
Chad blew out a breath. “It was a total shit show. I had to hide out until the season ended. My parents were harassed online and in person multiple times a day. That was the only part I felt bad about.”
“Wait.” I put up a hand. “Thatwas the only part you felt bad about?”
Chad looked at me like I was the crazy one. “Well, yeah. My parents didn’t do anything to deserve all the hate that got thrown their way. And honestly, neither did I.”
The three of us laughed and made sounds as Chad quickly presented his defense before we could say another word.
“No, really. I mean it. Listen.” He made eye contact with the three of us before he continued, “What did I do wrong? Date a bunch of women looking to have a fling with a rich guy from the Hamptons? Bring them ice cream and then stop talking to them after whatever we were doing ran its course or they left town? I never promised anyone forever. Never said we were exclusive or even dating. It was a hookup site, and I hooked up.”
“But you were sleeping with multiple women at the same time,” I said, trying to prove some kind of moral point.
“Yeah, I was. But so were they as far as I knew.”
River cleared his throat, and I focused my attention on him. “I’m not sure Chad’s the bad guy here. Sounds like he pissed off the wrong woman, is all.”
