The Rumor.
Let’s set the stage. I was early into my college experience. My boyfriend was a senior on a sports team at our school and we had been together for two years. For the story’s sake, let’s call this notorious boyfriend of mine, Homeboy. Well, Homeboy had fallen into the mindset that a lot of millennial guys seem to do in a state of complacency. AKA he had gotten lazy in our relationship and I was the sucker that thought the whole “thrill in the chase” thing was just an old joke. His major was a lot easier than mine, so he always wanted to have fun with the guys. Drinking beer, going to house parties, going to the bar, and the new cool thing to do, lie to your girlfriend… a lot. Keep in mind, the college we attended was about as big as some people’s high school. So, needless to say, not much went on without everyone finding out eventually.
At the time, I was waitressing/bartending so I could save up enough money to get him an amazing graduation present. While I was going to school full time and working over 20 hours a week, Homeboy decided to take up a full time position LYING to me. If I wasn’t physically there with him at a party, the bar, a basketball game, or whatever, it was basically like his motto was what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me. He was at another girl’s house when he claimed to be at the bar having a guy’s night. He was at the bar meeting up with another girl when he left my apartment saying he needed to meet up with a study group. The pathetic list of, “wow sis, they weren’t fooling around when they said love is blind, huh??” goes on and on. My saving grace was when I needed to use his iPad for an assignment. Neither of us were aware that all of the texts he had been deleting off of his phone were synced to his other devices. Thank you God for iCloud. That’s the day we had our biggest fight ever, at that point.
A couple weeks of him being in the dog house go by. All of a sudden, I get blindsided with a rumor so ridiculous that I thought it to be a prank. A guy on another sports team, let’s call him John, who hated my boyfriend and always had a crush on me, had finally lost his freaking mind. Basically what had happened was, I had drunk dialed the wrong person in an attempt to get ahold of my roommate. Realizing what I had done, I quickly hung up the phone before John even answered and called her. When he called back, after quite a bit of hesitation, I answered and told John it was simply an accident and to please not call again. That was it. It may have been less than a thirteen second conversation. So, keep that in mind and y’all better have a seat for this next part. He spins that exact phone call story into, “She called me and had me pick her up. We had sex in my truck, and then I dropped her back off at her place. She just kept saying how unhappy and she was with Homeboy.” In his mind, Homeboy would just break up with me so John himself could finally have a chance to ask me out. He didn’t realize that he was basically ruining my life. Regardless though, how messed up is that? Who would do something so selfish and reckless? So, John immediately told a couple of the other girls that were dating football players to strategically make this get back to my boyfriend within a day. One girl in particular (we’ll call her Abby) decided to take matters into her own hands and reach out to me and my boyfriend, individually. She was slut shaming me, calling me a whore, saying I was unworthy of my relationship, telling him he needs to break up with me because he deserved “so much better” etc. To this day, I have never despised another female more than her. That rumor spread so fast that by the next afternoon, Homeboy and his bad temper were at my door and dangerously close to physically assaulting me. I was blindsided, hurt, and totally confused by the thought of someone fabricating something so insane and so out of the blue. I eventually put one and one together and I called John. Right then and there, I made him man up and tell Homeboy over the phone that this was just a sad attempt to break us up out of pure jealousy. I’ve haven’t spoken to John or Abby, ever again.
After that day in September when the rumor surfaced, even though not a single word of that rumor was true, Homeboy never looked at me the same. He treated me so terribly that treating me like dirt would be an upgrade from the state of our relationship. In May, a couple days after graduation and multiple pointless attempts of begging Homeboy to try to at least act like he still loved me, I forced myself to break up with him. Then, I transferred schools. We were broken up for a little over a year. Both of us had been on dates and tried to move on. Quite a few of his close friends and teammates had reached out to me via social media, but I turned them all down out of respect for him and his feelings. One of the teammates who reached out to me happened to be Abby’s now ex boyfriend. I kindly told him not to attempt contact me anymore, again, out of respect of Homeboy’s feelings.
Eventually, Homeboy and I decided to grab coffee and catch up. His temper had become more manageable, he barely drank anymore, and he was sorry. He missed me, wanted to try things again, mentioned that I was the only girl he ever saw marriage with…. Yeah, you see exactly where that was going. You guessed it. So, I agreed to give him another chance. We have been officially together again for almost three months.
That’s when I was blindsided, yet again. One morning, after he left for work, the house had gotten cold and I was going to grab a pair of his socks. Instead of simply finding a pair he wouldn’t mind sharing, I found a picture of Abby. A provocative polaroid of Abby in a bikini, on a boat, holding a beer, in my boyfriend’s sock drawer. In that moment, something in me just snapped. All the emotions and the painful memories from school and how cruel they had been came flooding back, about 100 questions were just circling around in my head, and I could barely breathe. Of all people on the entire planet for this man to go after, he picked Abby. The girl that got in my boyfriend’s head, the girl that was so mean to me for no reason, the one girl who was known for her reputation of openly cheating on her boyfriend. He had no explanation, he wasn’t apologetic, he just kept lying to me over and over. He kept trying to fabricate an excuse on how the picture was almost a year old, he wasn’t there when it was taken, it had simply fallen out of her purse in his car, and he swore up and down that he never touched her. Obviously, everything he just said didn’t even add up. But here’s the icing on the cake. The beer she’s modeling in that slutty picture was released only a couple of months ago and I would know, because I really like that beer and I work at a brewery.