Victoria Ponte
4 min readJan 20, 2019

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Part III

Doubt

Will it ever end?

It was only going to be dinner. I felt relieved to have stopped stressing over whether to give him another meeting. I had decided to take a chance.

I knew the facts about what I was potentially getting involved with. I had found a gun in his closet. He always seemed to be on the phone. He was wealthy beyond belief considering what he said he did for a living. He was charming. He was brutally handsome. He was very interested in me. I continued to wonder if my career as a successful author and my beauty were enough to genuinely inspire such an intense level of interest so quickly.

I told myself to put my doubts aside about him and give him a true, fair second chance. If I was giving him a shot at love, why go in harboring doubts about his suitability?

I had an unusual level of confidence as I got ready for our dinner date. After all, he had aggressively pursued me after only meeting twice. I let myself have hope that there was the potential here for a lasting love affair.

My track record with men had been poor since my husband had left 5 years ago. I couldn’t seem to meet quite the right guy. Maybe I was just too naive about men because I had gotten married so young. When I met one who seemed to be better than nothing or at least had his shit reasonably together, it either never got off the ground or sputtered out after a short time.

Now, I had some hope since casting my doubts aside about Joe. I desperately wanted to believe he would be the next big thing in my life.

I was not, however, going to willfully ignore red flags if any more came up with him in the course of seeing each other again. I told myself I was truly going to vet him properly.

He arrived promptly at 8:00 on Friday night in his obscenely expensive car to pick me up for our date for dinner. I opened the door wearing one of my best dresses and sexy high heels. I had realized during the course of a week of turmoil about Joe that I hadn’t had sex in…

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Victoria Ponte

Writing to share wonder, gratitude and a sense of humor. Poetry, life lessons, survivor. Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/victoriaponte