Chapter 8
DAVID
When there were five minutes left in the USC/Notre Dame game, I leaned in toward April and asked her and her friends if they wanted to join us at Rock and Reilly’s.
It was a bar on campus that would get flooded with USC students and alumni after the game. Luckily, I knew the door guy, so we could bypass the line.
“I think I can convince them,” April said.
She did just that.
Rock and Reilly’s was jumping—USC won!—and we proceeded to have a blast for the next hour or two.
April seemed impressed that I was able to get all of us in without waiting in line. I heard her ask one of my friends what I did. I remember feeling proud when he told her I’d become a successful financial planner at the relatively young age of twenty-nine.
Looking back, should I have seen those two things as red flags? Maybe. However, that’s not what was on my mind that first day. Do you know what was? Her beautiful face. Her tanned legs. And her ample chest.
Like all good things, the party at Rock and Reilly’s had to end, and when April’s friends started saying their goodbyes, I knew we’d hit that point.
I asked for April’s number, and she gave it to me exuberantly.
I told her I’d call her later that week.
“Maybe we can grab some lunch,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” she said, but in a fun, flirty way that I took to be a yes.
Our first date was at a restaurant.
Our second date was at the Los Angeles Zoo. And on our third date, I took her to see the James Bond movie No Time to Die.
By the time our fourth date came around, we’d come full circle. I took April to another USC football game.
Once again, we met our friends at Rock and Reilly’s after the game, and we took a good razzing. They could tell we were officially a couple.
The beginning of our relationship was going swimmingly.
If I’d had my choice, I’d have spent every day with April, but that just wasn’t possible.
I was a hard-working wealth manager/financial planner who put in almost seventy hours a week. Not even thirty, I was making upwards of half a million dollars a year, and it was only going to get better. Advancement was looming.
When we did have time to hang out, April and I talked about our hopes and dreams for the future. I wanted to become a vice president at the company by thirty-two. Her goal was to own a coffee shop—April’s Coffee Shop, to be specific.
The name sounded a little hokey, but I didn’t dare tell her that.
I wanted more than anything to make April happy, and if owning a coffee shop would do that, then I’d do anything in my power to make that happen.
I wasn’t na?ve, and I knew most people would say that April was the catch in our relationship. Yes, I made great money, and was a decent-looking guy, but I wasn’t exactly Mr. Excitement.
April was gorgeous and could have had almost any guy she wanted. But she’d chosen me. And that meant everything.
So when we talked about April’s Coffee Shop, I might have made allusions to helping her get it off the ground—the funding, to be exact.
Was I being a pushover? Maybe, but as I admitted on the day I met April, I was smitten. And that caused me to do some pretty dumb things.
Not that I deserved what was to come.
No one deserved that.