Luke

** Names have been changed for confidentiality **

** Warning- alcohol abuse and suicide attempts are mentioned **

Just after the whole Mark and Julie fiasco occurred, I had met Luke. Luke and I had an on again off again kind of relationship. This is how it began...

Luke and I matched on Tinder. I lived in Niagara and Luke was from Hamilton. We began chatting and became quite fond of each other. One night I was out for dinner and drinks with my friend Sarah, we were at Kelsey’s in St. Catharines. Luke and I had been texting back and forth for a little while at this point. I told Sarah about him, and I told her how I was nervous to meet him. Especially since I had just experienced the huge betrayal from Mark and Julie. She suggested I invited him to Kelsey’s with us so I didn’t have to do it alone.

Luke showed up and sat with us. At first, I was super shy, but I opened up quickly. We seemed to connect well. I could tell since we both keep scooting closer to each other in the booth. We spent about an hour or two at Kelsey’s then decided to call it a night. We continued talking about how we’d like to see each other again.

Luke drove down to Niagara again and we went for a long drive. We talked, laughed, and had our first kiss. It was a great night. We told each other most of our deepest darkest secrets. Obviously, I had told him about what had just happened to me with Mark. He was flabbergasted that anyone would do something to another person like that.

From the very beginning, I was honest with him about where I stood on relationships. I was very hesitant and closed off. He understood but was determined to break me out of my shell. Sometimes I felt he was a little pushy, but I think I was just traumatized so everything felt extreme.

We continued to see each other, but never made anything official, I wasn’t ready yet. Luke had a daughter who was 2 at the time, and he had a very close relationship with his ex. I respected the fact that they maintained a civil relationship, but they hung out together too much for my liking. That was just one small thing that I was working on getting past.

One night, Sarah and I went downtown for some drinks at my favourite pub. This was during my “drinking away the pain” phase. I had a lot of drinks that night, as did Sarah. Bless her heart, she was and still is always down to do whatever it took to help me feel better. Luke knew we were going out for drinks, so he offered to pick us up and drive us home, so we didn’t have to pay for a cab. We stopped at McDonalds for some food. Sarah was struggling in the back seat; she had a sensitive stomach that night. When we got out of the drive thru, she yelled, “I’m going to be sick, pull over”. Luke pulled over and let her out. Poor thing. What a champ. Sarah got back in the car, and he took her home.

Luke pulled up to my house, he came inside, and we laid on the couch, cuddled and watched some TV. We talked more about making things official, but I was still hesitant. Luke was frustrated but was understanding.

The next morning, I got a text and screenshot from Sarah. She told me that Luke had reached out to her asking how she was feeling after last night and how he hopes she is okay. Sarah knew everything that had happened with Mark and Julie, so she thought she would let me know that he reached out to her. I definitely overreacted and got extremely upset at Luke. You might sit there reading this and ask, why? He was just being nice. Yes. He was just being nice; I know that now. At the time, I saw it as a “sneaky move”. I told him it upset me and that I would have rather that he asked me directly how Sarah was. She was my friend, not his. Again, traumatized. I do feel bad for reacting the way I did, but I was scared.

That situation kind of turned me off, he was being really pushy with making things official and I just needed some space. I told him that I wasn’t ready to get into a relationship and I also apologized. He didn’t take it very well. He called me crying, begging me to reconsider and he kept apologizing. It honestly did upset me to know that I had hurt him.

I felt that I had been honest from the beginning about where I stood on jumping into another relationship. I guess that conversation went in one ear and out the other.

A few nights after, I was hanging out with my friend Adam. We were just friends. We were playing on snapchat that night. He took a photo of himself and posted it to my story. Luke saw the post and lost it on me. He called me every name in the book. He thought that I was trying things out with a new guy. I told him he was just a friend, but he never believed me. I will never forget the last thing he said to me that night. He said, “You are such a selfish bitch, next time, take all the pills and do it right”.

If you haven’t read my Mark blog, go read it and you will understand how big of a low blow this was.

After that conversation, I had no desire to talk to him ever again. Which of course, didn’t happen.

Months had gone by, and Luke reached out to me. I was very curious what this guy wanted. I replied to him and asked him what he wanted. He apologized to me for what he had said months prior. I chose to forgive him. We did some small talk, but never fully reconnected.

More months had gone by, he had just gotten out of an engagement. We started chatting again. Some of my old feelings for him started coming back the more we talked. We started hanging out again, going for dinner, drinks and did some little date nights at the Drive-in. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to get into a relationship with him. I thought, what happened was in the past, lets move on and see what happens. Wrong move, Emily.

This new relationship lasted about 3 weeks. It was pathetic but let me tell you why.

I went to Luke’s house, we hung out in his room watched some tv and cuddled. Well, cuddling turned into more than cuddling. This was the first time we had taken the next step in our “relationship”. After that, we were hungry and wanted to get some dinner. We went to Montana’s. We ordered some beers, apps and Luke ordered all you can eat ribs. We had a nice dinner and conversation. When it came time to pay, someone conveniently forgot his wallet. I didn’t think anything of it, so I paid. We called it a night.

The next day, Luke was MIA. I had texted him a few times and he never replied to any of them. I called him and it went straight to voicemail. He then finally texted me back saying, “sorry, I’ve been busy”. Right then and there, I knew something was up. I asked him if everything was okay, he responded, “Ya, I’ve been busy”. I wasn’t buying it. The next few days, it was the same thing. One-word answers whenever he decided to actually reply. Eventually, I just told him I wasn’t interested in being in a relationship with someone who can’t make the time to even reply to a text. He ended up ghosting me. He deleted me off of all social media, never texted or called me back. He was gone. Awesome.

I’d say about a month later, Sarah and I decided to go for drinks at my favourite pub again. It was really busy that night. As we walked in, I was looking for a booth to sit in. In the second booth from the front, I see Luke and his friend. He looked at me with a nervous look on his face. Sarah tried to distract me and push me to keep walking. I did no such thing.

You can bet your ass that I walked up to that booth and ripped him a new one. This guy lives in Hamilton. My favourite pub is downtown St Catharines. He knew that I loved going there. I was there so often; he would be stupid to think I wouldn’t be there. I sat down and just let it all out.

His friend had no idea what was going on and what had happened. I, without hesitation, explained. I told him, in a nutshell, that he slept with me, made me pay for his all you can eat ribs dinner and beer, then ghosted me! All he could say was, “I’m sorry, I got scared to get attached to you again”. Nice… Well, I ended up drinking his beer and made him drive us home. That was the least he could do!

We agreed to stop attempting a relationship and just be friends. I am still friends with him, and if he reads this, I’m sure he won’t be happy. LOL Sorry Bud. He admitted that he was in the wrong, I admitted I was in the wrong as well.

He’s a nice guy, but better as a friend.