I was looking for him, and he was coy about his location. This, I thought, was odd; he often invited me to the bars where he was drinking with his friends, who I called "the drunk chicks", sometimes with the adjective "hot" when I was feeling friendly.
I've dropped "hot" in the past few months; it is one of those unnecessary words an editor should take out.
So I wandered around the downtown area, popping into his favourite bars to look for him.
I found him by finding the car. It was outside a restaurant, one of the most expensive in town, and the one with the broadest wine selection as far as I can determine. Not that I spend much time determining such things.
Anyway, I found him inside, having dinner with one of the drunk chicks. As my father says, Ex always orders the appetizer.
I plunked myself down at their table and waved the server away. No, I didn't need dinner. Or a drink. Or dessert.
It was an uncomfortable meal all around after I arrived. I have a way of ruining a party. At the end of the meal, he paid the entire bill. And I was furious.
I felt that we had very little money, certainly not enough to spend the way he was spending it. I asked for and got separate bank accounts. I asked for and got a list of the household expenses. I set up autotransfers to pay my share. I didn't think about it much; my main concern was that MY money not be spent on premium gin.
About a month later, I got a banking app for my phone. I immediately noticed two things: our lines of credit, which we'd paid off a year earlier, seemed to be showing up as awfully odd limits when I thought the limits were round numbers; and I somehow had $1500 in my account left over after the household bills were paid.
And that was the first sign that something was wrong.
O.o
ReplyDelete