14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Meg
L ance had been gone for two weeks. We’d texted a couple of times but hadn’t established a date for getting together again. And the more time droned on, the stranger our relationship seemed. I mean, the morning he’d brought me coffee in bed, sex had been amazing. He’d apologized for overdoing it at Octoberfest, which I really appreciated. But there were little quirky things about him that were weird. When I dug right down and examined my warring emotions, our fondness was lopsided. When he arrived, I wanted to kiss and cuddle and show him how much I missed him. Lance? He wanted to polka and drink beer.
Was I over analyzing? Mom certainly made her opinion clear, but she’d compared Lance to my uncle, saying that he wasn’t the doctor type.
Type?
Did there have to be a type?
“He misspelled siren,” I said, explaining about our Scrabble game at Mom’s while Elaine and I worked to catalogue a box of new books, sitting at a study table behind the fiction section.
“So?” She peered at me through her thick lenses. “Lots of people are bad spellers.”
After adhering a library label, I closed the book and put it on the cart. “Doctors?”
“Sure, smart people can be bad spellers, too. Even math geniuses.”
“Do you know any math geniuses?”
“No, but I’m trying to make a point here.”
I stuck a label to the inside of another book and rubbed it flat. “I appreciate your candor. I know there are a lot of people out there who aren’t good spellers. I just don’t expect a doctor to be one.”
Elaine reached inside the carton and pulled out a thick novel. “When you add it all up, how much time have you spent with the dude? And I don’t mean texting and talking on the phone. How much time have you physically been together?”
“Well, there were four days on the cruise where we were inseparable. Then just the three days he was here.”
“And he drove an old Toyota Corolla?”
“Yeah, but that’s a decent enough car. He doesn’t need to have a new SUV to impress me.”
Elaine gaped with those enormous eyes. “Aaaand he drinks too much?”
I’d told her about that, too. On the ship, I hadn’t really considered his drinking to be excessive. After all, adults tend to imbibe in copious amounts of alcohol when they’re on vacation. I didn’t realize he might have a problem until he bought the beer boots at Octoberfest and subsequently passed out on my couch—the unconscious part I hadn’t told Elaine because if I did, she’d tell me to dump him and run. Nor had I mentioned the Bloody Mary he’d downed the next morning…or losing count of the glasses of wine he drank at Mom’s. But now when I took a moment to look back at the cruise, we both did an awful lot of drinking, though he’d definitely consumed substantially more than me.
As far as Elaine was concerned, I’d told her the sex was amazing and I wasn’t going to say anything else about that part of our relationship. Nonetheless, since she mentioned it, Lance and I really hadn’t spent all that much time together even though we’d technically known each other nearly four months. No wonder I was having doubts, especially since it wasn’t unusual to go days without hearing a peep out of him—sometimes weeks.
I pulled a new library sticker from its backing and managed to get it stuck to my shirt. “He does drink a lot when he’s on vacation, but who knows what he’s like when he’s home.”
She snorted. “I’ll bet he’s as sober as a tree.”
I stripped off the sticker and flicked it into the bin. “A tree?”
Elaine shrugged, putting the novel onto the cart. “A stick? I don’t know. As sober as a nun?”
I laughed. “At least he’s amazing at dancing the polka.”
“Then he’ll fit right in around here.”
True, but Lance had professed to being an Ohio boy. He even openly hated my Badgers. He may have enjoyed Octoberfest, but he didn’t mention anything about moving to La Crosse. On the other hand, I didn’t talk about the possibility of me moving to Columbus either, which would be a colossal disaster. My mother would have a cow. She’d not only bought a house here, she’d moved my grandmother all the way from Colorado just to be close to me.
I dropped my forehead into the palm of my hand. What the heck was I doing dating a party animal who lived three states away?
“Something’s really bothering you.” Elaine clasped my shoulder and squeezed. “I can tell, and it’s not Lance’s drinking or his spelling. What is it?”
“I don’t know.” But as soon as the words left my lips, I did know. “Um…”
“What?” she pressed.
“He not only would rather watch movies than read, while we were watching The Hunger Games series, which he said he loved, he confessed that he’d never read a single one of the novels. He also admitted he’s not much of a reader altogether—but on the ship he told me he had read all the time.” Wasn’t that akin to lying? Was he trying to impress me because I’m a librarian?
“Seriously?” Elaine grabbed the last book out of the box and shook it under my nose. “Who hasn’t read The Hunger Games ?”
“Lance Lovell, evidently.” I twisted my ponytail around my finger. “But he’s still a huge fan.”
“Look.” Elaine opened the hardback, carefully pressing the pages downward so as not to break the spine. “I might have been a believer with Scrabble, but not reading ? You’re a freaking reader on steroids.”
I shrugged. “Lots of people aren’t readers.”
“Stop for one minute and listen to yourself.” She threw out her hands. “You love to read.”
Yes, I did, but Lance and I could have lots of varying interests—didn’t most couples? “So? That’s me.”
“You’re also surrounded by books of all types with computers at your fingertips.”
I groaned, would she just let it go? “Duh.”
“No, what I meant to say is that you are an expert at research.” She put the hardback on the cart and stuck her googly-eyed face an inch away from mine. “Have you looked him up?”
“Sure—well, I searched social media profiles. I also found the little town where he lives in Ohio and whatnot.” But damn, I didn’t even know the name of the hospital where he worked .
“Not good enough.” Elaine thrust her finger toward my office door. “Go forth and collect data And for the record, I think the dude is awesome. After all, he got you to dance a polka, didn’t he?”
As I headed off, I gave her a wink. “I suppose, but I got him to skip all the way from my apartment to the Octoberfest grounds.”
She stood and grabbed the cart by the handles. “Don’t skirt around it. You enjoyed yourself.”
I hated it when she was right.
I did have a great time at Octoberfest with Lance. Polka dancing was not an activity I’d choose for myself, but once I realized no one was watching us and he didn’t seem to care how many times I stepped on his toes, I just went with it.
But no matter how much I wanted to ignore all the stupid voices in my head filling my mind with doubts, I just wanted to fall madly in love with the man. Doing so would fit in ever so nicely with my plans to get married, have kids, and buy a house. However, what woman wouldn’t have doubts when trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with a guy with whom she’d only spent a cumulative sum of eight days?
Why couldn’t I just roll with it rather than overanalyzing everything? On the other side, how could I ignore my inner voice of caution? Was Lance an alcoholic? Was I one of those women who fell for men like her father? Why did he drive an older Corolla? Because he spent his money on vacations? Why did he sometimes ignore me for weeks? I hated to be ignored.
Oh…and how could I forget how he dissed me the last night on the ship?
God, I’m gullible.
Of course, he’d misspelled siren, substituting the “e” for an “i” when we were playing Scrabble at Mom’s. Interestingly, she didn’t correct him—she just gave me a knowing look which needled at me, too.
It didn’t take a psychic to know Lance did not endear himself to my mother after he drank all but one glass of the two bottles of wine served at dinner. Maybe he was like my dad. Could I be drawn to him because of some sort of underlying daddy complex?
God save me. The last thing I needed was to fall in love with an alcoholic .
Sitting at my desk with the door closed, the first thing I Googled was Dr. Lance Lovell. The search came up with a dentist in Wyoming, a PhD who was a consultant in Montana, and a lawyer born in 1960 who also lived in Montana.
The skin across my entire body prickled with heat.
I pulled up the website the Ohio State Medical Board and typed Lovell and found there at least were no complaints lodged against his last name.
I then started methodically bringing up the websites of hospitals within fifty miles of Darbydale, the first one being The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. I clicked on “ Find a Doctor, ” typed in Lovell, and got “ There are no providers who match your search criteria .” I typed the name Virgil and got the same result. I repeated the process at the five other hospitals within a reasonable driving distance.
When those searches turned up nothing, I went back out to Google and searched for Dr. Virgil Lovell, found an obituary for a farmer, and another for Dr. V.C. Lovell who passed away in 2012.
I went to Facebook and examined Lance’s profile—his picture with his messy hair wearing a wrinkled t-shirt and the name Lance Lovell, M.D. beneath his photo. In his feed he’d recently added some stunning images of La Crosse including a selfie of him with the bridge in the background. I didn’t remember taking him down to the river. In fact, we’d been so busy at the Octoberfest grounds, we hadn’t made it to Riverside Park, but that’s where he must have taken the shot—or else he’d photoshopped his handsome self into a stock image.
Maybe he drove by the park on his way out of town?
Weird.
Still, his post didn’t mention anything about meeting up with this great girl he got to know on his cruise to Bermuda. Was he embarrassed by me? He was so perfect, and I… wasn’t . Sure, he told me he liked curvy girls, but did he really?
I hadn’t ever confronted him about his first name. I suppose I should have said something, but we hadn’t really been together long enough to talk about such a trivial thing. And I wasn’t exactly good at confrontation. “I saw your receipt says Virgil and the last name is blotted out, so what gives?” I could have asked, but that wasn’t me. I was more the type who kept things inside and waited to find out if I ought to worry or not.
I’d chosen not. Sort of .
For the hell of it, I typed Virgil Lovell in Facebook’s search. I didn’t use “Dr.” or “M.D.” A bunch of Virgils with the last name Lovell appeared. I scanned the list and even opened a couple of profiles, but none of them were Lance, or whatever his name was.
Not about to give up, I grabbed my cell phone and did a Google search of his image from one of the selfies I’d taken.
Google gave me the thinking circle, but after what seemed like ages, it came up with two exact likenesses, both of them from Facebook. The second was the dude I’d been communicating with, Lance Lovell. The very first image was also my Lance, but his name was Virgil Klein.
Klein is a German last name.
I gulped. The condensation from his glass had made the last name unreadable on the receipt I’d seen on the ship.
My hands shook as I opened Virgil Klein’s profile.
There was no reference to Lance. No reference to Lovell. No middle name was listed.
By this stage, I shouldn’t have been shocked by what I saw.
But I was stunned, rendered dizzy, and straining to breathe.
Why hadn’t I done this sooner? I was a researcher, yet I’d just blindly trusted some dude I’d met on a ship’s excursion. I’d blindly believed everything he said, kissed him, slept with him.
Virgil Klein’s Facebook header displayed a picture of him with a woman—a gorgeous brunette. They were happy, laughing, and on the deck of a pristine white cruise ship. His posts were almost entirely pictures of him with her—Christmas, Thanksgiving, on a beach somewhere.
His profile said he went to East High School in Columbus. It didn’t mention college. He was married to Jocelyn Klein and he worked for the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio.
My head spun and my fingers trembled as I moved to the mouse and clicked on Jocelyn’s profile. She was an entertainer for Cutter Cruise Lines.
Holy shit.
Everything unraveled in front of me. I’d heard a big truck rumble to life when I was on the phone with Virgil . The two-timing bastard was a garbage man and he messed around behind his wife’s back when she was at sea, performing on cruise ships.
He drove an old Corolla.
He wasn’t a doctor.
He wasn’t honest .
He has been stringing me along over the past several months and I’ve been too blind to realize he has blown smoke in my face since the moment I sat beside him on that damned bus!