13. Boston

The high I was on as I walked El to her car, kissed her again, and then drove myself home to my condo lasted about twenty more minutes. Long enough to chat once more with my mother to agree that things had gone stunningly well, long enough to pour myself a beer to celebrate that I’d finally asked out the woman I wanted and that she seemed to potentially want me back, and long enough to be reminded in the most painful way possible that I’d been untruthful with her.

She still wanted to go out with Chad.

I sat in the wingback leather chair in my living room in the dark, facing the wall of windows that overlooked the river outside and stared at my phone as if it had betrayed me.

In reality, I was the one doing all the betraying. The only way to fix this was to break it off, to make the Chad problem go away.

The funny thing was that I hadn’t even talked to Chad since the festival. We saw each other once every couple months when we both had time, had a few drinks and reminisced about our ch