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A frown tugs down at my lips as I read the text again. I don’t recognize the number, and I’ve never been to Hawaii, so the message obviously isn’t for me. The logical conclusion would be that the sender texted the wrong number, but at the same time, whoever sent this obviously knows the person they were trying to send it to. They went on vacation together five years ago. Wouldn’t they have the right number stored in their phone?
I shake my head and shove my phone into my pocket without responding. It’s probably a scammer trying to get me to engage so they can make me fall for them and send them thousands of dollars in big-box-store gift cards to help them escape a war-torn country or a Peruvian prison.
Not today, asshole. I watch true crime documentaries just like everyone else.
Refocusing, I look back down at the lesson plan I’ve been fine-tuning for the last hour or so. Being in the classroom, teaching fourth grade at Grenville Elementary is my dream job, and I love it, but this part has to be my least favorite aspect. It can be a bit tedious, and I keep getting distracted. Taking a deep breath, I square my shoulders and hunker down, determined to get this thing done.
I’ve barely written two words when a knock on the door startles me. The door swings open and my best friend, Raven, strolls in before I can even consider answering her knock.
“Hey, what are you up to?” she asks as she swings the door closed behind her and strides toward me.
“It’s Sunday,” I say, swirling a palm over the scattered papers on the table in front of me.
“Ugh. Lesson plans.”
“A tedious, yet necessary evil,” I say, leaning back in my chair as she slides into the one across from me.
Having your best friend live in the apartment three doors down from yours is great. It really is. But sometimes, Raven’s boredom gets the better of her, and she pops over and distracts me at the worst possible times.
I look down at my half-completed work and sigh. I can finish it later. I could honestly use a break.
“Coffee?” I ask as I push out of my chair.
“Yes, please ,” she groans, dropping her head to the table dramatically. “I’m exceedingly somnolent today.”
“Oooh, and using big words, too,” I tease, then laugh when her hand shoots up to flip me the middle finger.
“Shut up. ‘Somnolent’ was the word of the day on my calendar app this morning.”
“Good job using it correctly in a sentence. Gold star,” I say as I shove her favorite mug under the coffee maker and push the button to brew.
She responds with a long, tortured sigh, and I can’t help but chuckle at her dramatics. My best friend is nothing, if not theatrical.
“So, I got a weird text earlier,” I say as I carry our steaming mugs over to the table.
“Oh, yeah?” she asks, perking up and lifting her coffee to her lips for a small sip. “What kind of text? Unsolicited dick pic? Let me see.”
I slap away the hand she stretches toward me with a laugh, then dig my phone from my pocket as I say, “No, you perv. It was…well, here. Just read it.”
I unlock the screen and pull up the message before sliding the phone across the table. Raven picks up the device, one eyebrow arching high as she reads it. Her eyes turn a bit glassy as if she’s thinking for several beats before she shrugs and hands the phone back to me.
“You should text him back. He sounds cute.”
“A, that makes zero sense, and B, how do you know it’s a guy? It could be a woman.”
“Nah,” she says shaking her head and pursing her lips. “It’s a guy. A woman definitely told him his eyes were the color of the ocean. Guys only say stuff like that to women in romance novels.”
“Well, going with that logic, it could be a woman saying it to another woman,” I toss back, but Raven only grins.
“Then text her back. Maybe a little hot, lesbian action would break this dry spell you’re going through.”
I shake my head and ignore that last comment. “It’s probably a romance scammer.”
Raven huffs. “You watch too many true crime documentaries. You’ve had this number for what? Three weeks? That text was probably meant for whoever had the number before you.”
“I didn’t even think of that.”
I had to change my number a few weeks ago thanks to a dating-app-meetup-gone-wrong. Archie seemed great online. Very attractive. Sweet. Charming. A great sense of humor. We chatted for weeks on the app before exchanging numbers. We even shared a few video calls so we both knew the other was who we said we were. He was…perfect.
I should’ve known the perfect man doesn’t exist.
When we finally met up for the first time, everything started out great. We went to dinner at a nice, rooftop restaurant near the beach. The blue Pacific served as a perfect backdrop for a romantic night. After we finished eating, we took off our shoes and walked in the sand. He held my hand, and butterflies erupted in my stomach.
I couldn’t wait for him to kiss me.
But then everything went to shit. Fast.
A couple of guys glanced our way as they walked past, and my supposed dream guy morphed into this aggressive beast who dropped my hand and pushed a stranger for looking at me. The guy and his friend tried to deescalate the situation, but Archie was like a feral animal, refusing to listen to reason.
I froze, standing there staring with wide eyes as my date screamed at this innocent stranger, spittle flying from his mouth as he balled a fist and took a swing. I regained my motor functions when the second guy joined in, attempting to push Archie away from his friend.
So, I did what any woman with half a brain would do––I ran. Straight back to my car, where I locked myself inside and attempted to calm my racing heart.
I was halfway home when the first call came through. I sent it straight to voicemail, and three seconds later, my phone rang again. And again. And again.
I blocked his number the second I parked in the lot at my apartment complex, took a deep breath, and thanked the stars that it was over, and I’d escaped, unscathed.
Archie was obviously a psychopath, and I was lucky I didn’t go somewhere more private with him.
I deleted his voicemails without listening to them, then deleted the dating app from my phone. But that wasn’t the end of it, as I’d assumed.
I got a call from a strange number with a local area code the next day, and I answered it, not even considering it might be Archie. But it was him. He’d bought a disposable phone just to call and spew terrible words at me for abandoning our date and blocking his number.
I hung up without responding and blocked his new number, and a few hours later, I got a call from yet another unfamiliar number, which I let go to voicemail. The message was from Archie, promising to keep calling until I stopped “being a pussy” and talked to him.
I have no idea how much money he spent on burner phones to harass me over the next week, but the whole ordeal culminated in me changing my own number. Thank God, I didn’t tell the man where I live or work. He knows I’m a teacher, but I never gave him the name or location of the school.
“You should just text them back,” Raven says, pulling me out of the dark memory. “Just say, ‘new number, who dis?’”
I smile as she laughs, then shake my head. “I’m sure he or she will get the message when I don’t text back. I don’t need to engage.”
“You’re such a cynic,” she says before draining what’s left of her coffee.
“No, I’m a pragmatist,” I argue, and she pushes up from her chair to go put her empty mug in the sink.
“All right, Miss Pragmatic, I’m going to get out of here so you can get your work done. Text me later? We can order a pizza and watch Dateline .”
“I thought I watched too many true crime shows?” I shoot back, but she just laughs and waves before heading out.
I smile at the closed door for a moment, then look down at my phone on the table. Picking it up, I read the text again. The words make me a bit sad. They feel poignant. Like the texter is living in their memories of better times.
I close the texting app and set the phone back down before shaking myself. This lesson plan isn’t going to create itself.
Time to get back to work.