Willfully Blind

CHAPTER 9 Same Old, Same Old

Lisa finally ended her thirty-minute business call about a prospective gig. She was sitting in her car in the United Center Sports Arena parking lot, straining to hear her prospect. He was damn near whispering, hence the need to stay put during their discussion. Her 1995 Jeep Wrangler was noisy, and although she didn't usually notice how loud it was, during important calls she was extra self-conscious about the noise it put off. Plus, she wanted to give the caller her undivided attention. The last thing she wanted to do was come across preoccupied or distracted.

No sooner than she pulled out of the parking lot and into a steady flow of traffic, her phone rang again.

"Shoot!" She glanced at her integrated navigation system and was excited to see it was her girlfriend Shannon.

Lisa glanced in her rearview mirror as she merged onto the expressway, and hit the button on the navigation screen to engage her Bluetooth.

"Hey, Shannon!"

"Hey, what's up, girl? Is this a good time?"

"Yep, perfect timing actually. You can keep me company on my drive home. I'm just leaving the arena." Spending the extra time on her business call had turned out beneficial; at least in terms of traffic.

"How are you? We haven't talked in what...three months?" Lisa recalled the last time they hung out being a drag since Shannon spent most of the night complaining about relationship drama.

"Yeah, I think it was like three months. It's kinda sad, Lisa. We have got to do better."

"I know! It's just so hard finding a balance. You work too much and neglect your relationships, or you don't work enough," Lisa said, with a sarcastic gruff.

Sharron shared that she had gotten a job offer, out-of-state and was seriously considering it. Lisa mentioned her proposition from out west.

"It's like you need to either know somebody or know somebody who knows somebody to even get a callback," Shannon said.

"How's Andrew?" Lisa asked, just to be polite. She had zero interest in his well-being.

"Girl, we finally broke up. For good this time!"

Lisa tried not to come across as too excited but could have broken out into a dance. He was a known womanizer and had totaled her car one day while she was at work and of course, he had nothing to contribute to her deductible.

Lisa pulled into her garage space, thankful to be home so fast. She turned the key back and continued chatting with Shannon.

"Alright, Shannon, let me get off this phone. I guess I'll go in here and figure out something for dinner. How 'bout we hook up soon? Like, go out—

"Listen, Lisa...I have something I need to tell you, but I'm a little apprehensive. I mean, I've seen this kind of thing backfire, and I don't want to risk our friendship." Lisa quietly drew in a long breath. I should have known, she thought to herself. Shannon randomly calling her on a weeknight was more than unusual.

"Okaaay..." Lisa's heart began to flutter.

"First, I want you to know I realize it's not any of my business, and I don't want to come across like I'm trying to stir up trouble; like I'm just injecting myself into your relationship."

Dread seeping through, Lisa spoke just above a whisper.

"Just tell me."

Shannon fell silent.

"Seriously, Shannon... you can tell me. It's not like you'll be held culpable." Lisa attempted to perk up, hoping to ease Shannon's apprehension. Another long pause followed.

"Well, I don't know the backdrop so, I'm judging strictly from the optics."

"Uh-huh." Lisa tried her best not to allow the trepidation to overcome her.

"Okay, so I happened to be on Facebook this morning and—you know Dirk and I are Facebook friends, right?"

"Yeah. What, you saw something crazy on his page?" Lisa asked, hoping to hurry Shannon along with her story.

"So, I'm also friends with one of his boys, and I happened on his page, right? Well, apparently, they're all hanging out at what looked like a frat party or something, the way they were all flashing their little hand gestures. Anyway, it was a pretty large group, and somebody took pictures and tagged some of the guys from the get-together. One of the guys being Dirk."

"Okay. And..."

"Okay, so long story short. In the background of one of the pictures posted, I noticed Dirk had some girl –– well, put it like this, there was some girl sitting on his lap. Let me just say, it was not a good look."

Shannon's short story long had been painful in every sense of the word. Lisa took a deep breath and quietly exhaled through her nose.

"Wow," was the only word that came to mind.

"Girl, just go on Facebook and see it for yourself. Maybe it's one of his friends, and it just looks like something it isn't. You think it could have been his little sister?"

"Ahhh, no. She's away at school. Anyway, I appreciate the heads-up, Shannon. I'll take a look at it tonight."

"Okay, and again, I hope you don't think I'm trying to cause beef in your relationship. I just didn't want it to catch you off guard, you know what I'm saying?"

"I do, and I really appreciate you bringing it to my attention."

Lisa sat there for the next fifteen minutes, slumped posture. In some ways, she was not surprised, but still disheartened. Maybe Shannon, who was normally pretty perceptive, had misread the situation. She knew, however, she was wishful thinking. Lisa moved slowly toward the house. Shannon, along with everyone else who'd noticed Dirk in the background, had to have viewed her as some kind of fool.

Lisa trudged into the condo and dropped her keys on the counter. She took her time about going upstairs to get her laptop, although she was interested to see if it was as bad as Shannon described.

Subconsciously, she was hoping Dirk would come home so they could discuss it before she "got a chance" to see it. It was close to an hour later when she finally went on Facebook to see what Shannon had seen. Sure enough, there was Dirk in the background in one of the pictures with some girl on his lap, his arm loosely draped around her waist. As if that wasn't bad enough, the picture also captured the girl holding Dirk's face, leaning in to plant a kiss on his cheek. He sat full-on grinning. Lisa slammed her laptop shut and shoved it off her lap onto the bed.

"Asshole!"