After I create her fictitious account, I friend her with my real account and create several more (fake) people for her to be friends with. Then I have her send friend requests to several of my friends as well as random people with lots of Facebook friends who make me think they’re not too particular about whom they accept friend requests from. I briefly consider setting up other social media sites for her, but Tarek only looks at Facebook, so I don’t bother.
Tarek has never gone after one of Kya’s or my friends in our inner circle, but he’ll think a Facebook friend, especially someone perfectly suited to his tastes whom I’ve never mentioned, would be fair game.
By the time Giselle sends a friend request to Tarek, she looks legit. Even I’m half in love with her.
It takes him four minutes to notice.
Facebook Friend Request Accepted
Tarek Oliver
Hey, Giselle. Nice to cyber-meet you. How do you know Marissa?
And then I wait.
If I know one thing about Mr. Tarek Oliver, it’s that he hates being ignored. He craves attention. All the time. He’d ship it in from other countries if he could avoid the import fees. If the lady in question isn’t being an appreciative enough audience to his magnificence, he raises the stakes in his circus sideshow until the number of swords he’s swallowing is impossible to ignore.
I think about answering him in the afternoon, but then I reconsider. Tomorrow would be even better. But to tweak his nose, I have Giselle post some photos she took in Sri Lanka—which I buy off an amateur travel photographer on the internet—so he knows she’s online and just not answering him.
It works.
Three hours later, I get this.
Tarek Oliver
Can’t believe Marissa never mentioned you. Actually, I can. Ha!
Really enjoying your work.
I roll my eyes. It’s so pretentious of him to say work like he’s well-versed in travel photography. Just add travel photographer to all the things he thinks he is. Watch. Next he’ll be saying he’s a wine connoisseur. He knows nothing about wine. Unless Guinness counts as wine.
I wait an hour before messaging him back. Waiting until tomorrow would upset him more, but Giselle did friend him, so I decide it’s more believable for her to be at least a little interested in answering him.
Giselle Bisset
Hey, Tarek. Nice to meet you too. I knew Marissa in California. She was my best friend in third and fourth grades, before she moved away. We’d lost touch. Yay for Facebook.
And that’s it. That’s all I have her say. I don’t have her do the girl thing like asking him a bunch of questions to show an eagerness to engage with him. I don’t acknowledge his compliment or offer him one of my own.
I can almost see him in his apartment, reading at his laptop, forcing himself to walk away and then going back again, unable to leave it—Giselle—me—alone. I giggle out loud imagining his expression, his leaning away from the keyboard to run his hands through his hair, his eyebrows all mashed together in frustration.
It only takes him three minutes to write back.
Tarek Oliver
Want to get together tonight and tell me all about it?
Whoa.
Wow, he works fast. I mean, I’ve always known he works fast—that’s part of the problem. He operates on looks and superficial characteristics. He’s always after the cheap thrill, the one-night stand, the sex without strings attached. Who a woman really is, her thoughts and feelings, are immaterial to him except to exploit in conversation so he can pretend to be understanding or sympathetic or sensitive until he lures her into bed then cuts her loose.
But this is super fast, even for Tarek. He’s operating from a Facebook picture and just a few lines of messaging. Ugh, Tarek.
Giselle Bisset
You’re sweet! Being new in Atlanta, it’s nice to start making friends. I can’t, though. I think my boyfriend might get the wrong idea.
His reply comes a split second later.
Tarek Oliver
Boyfriend, huh? New in town and you already have a boyfriend? Some guys have all the luck.
Giselle Bisset
Not in town, unfortunately. Anton is still in Germany. We’re trying the long-distance thing.
Tarek Oliver
Long distance? No problem, then. Come on over and you won’t even have to tell him.
I shut down my laptop. Yup, that’s the player I know and thousands of women have loved—briefly. I shudder. That’s about as much of Tarek as I can take for today. And the more I let him twist in the wind, waiting for some kind of attention, the more desperate he’ll be for it. I stretch my hands behind my head and shift in my chair and frown at the pain. I think I must have bruised my butt when Tarek dumped me in the shower. I decide to make a doctor’s appointment for later today.
I dread going back to work on Monday. I’ve taken my two-week honeymoon off to recover from my happily never after. I haven’t recovered, but I can’t afford to be unemployed. I have a fake movie to finance. So Monday I’ll have to do a walk of shame that says look at me, I took time off for a trip to the Bahamas I didn’t take and a wedding that never happened.
Chapter Seven
Are we expecting flooding today? What’s with the swim ring?” Blaire jerks her chin at the inflatable plastic ring I’m carrying as she intercepts me on the way to my desk Monday morning.
I hold up the seat donut. “It’s a cushion. For sitting. I, um, bruised my bottom. It’s sore. The doctor gave me this.”
“Wow! And here I thought you were home drowning your sorrows. I didn’t know you’d be out getting physical. Tell me all about it.” She props her chin in her hand and rests her elbow on top of the short wall of my cubicle.
“I fell in the shower.”
Her face falls. “Oh.” It brightens a second later. “Alone?”
“No.” My anger bubbles up like boiling caramel—thick, sticky, and about a hundred degrees hotter than boiling water—as memories of Tarek pierce flaming swords through my heart. It’s not just my bruised backside. It’s the white-hot humiliation of being hefted like a sack of inferior chocolates and thrown onto the shower floor after Tarek admitted he’d forced the love of my life to abandon me.
She squeals and claps her hands.
I shake my head and correct myself. “I mean, yes, of course I was alone.”
Blaire pouts. “Oh, boo. You’re no fun. You know what you need? Revenge sex. Come on. Get back at Liam by slamming some hard bodies. Hand me a Post-it. We’ll make a list of the guys you can have revenge sex with. Get your old attic dusted.”
I don’t hand her a Post-it and sigh instead. “I’m not interested in revenge sex.” Or getting my attic dusted. I almost wish I were. It’d cost less than the secret Tarek tortured-by-love plan, that’s for sure.
Troy from Sports walks around the corner and stops short when he sees Blaire.