The Sound Of Love

“So are we dating now?” asked Chantal. “I mean, before we were just talking on the phone. It made sense to call each other just friends. But now? I don’t think that label applies anymore if I’m being very honest. Friends don’t fu*k. Unless we’re friends with benefits that is, which is a completely different matter entirely. What do you think we should call us?”

“I would really like you to be my girlfriend,” said Michael. “I mean, you really are the perfect girl for me. You are exactly the kind of girl that I would want in my life. You’re smart, a great conversationalist, a great listener to boot and you’re so kind. To top it all off you are so utterly beautiful that I can’t stand it. Do you want to be my girlfriend? I really think we should be up front about this. We’re adults, after all, there’s no reason for us to shy away from this.”

“I agree,” said Chantal. “And… yes I think we should make it official. We really like each other. I honestly never thought that I would be seeing a guy that I talked to at work but here we are. You really are the perfect guy for me and I’m not just saying that. You are incredibly handsome, you’re smart, you don’t let your money cloud your judgment. These are all highly admirable traits and they are, more or less, the exact same traits that I would want my boyfriend to have. I’m really flattered you asked, and I’m really glad that you feel this way about me because I feel it too.”

Michael smiled and raised his cup of coffee. “So, I guess we’re dating now!”

Chantal laughed, raised her own coffee cup and knocked it lightly against Michael’s. “I guess we are. It’s a good feeling to be dating you. You are quite a man.”

“It’s a good feeling to be dating you too,” said Michael. “You are an incredible woman.”

Chantal felt a little uncertain however. She still couldn’t understand why he would want her of all people. Why would he want her to feel like she was the only woman in the world that would make him feel this way? It really didn’t make any sense. Still, she put the thought out of her head and they headed back to his place to spend some more time together.

“I wanted to ask you something if that’s alright,” said Chantal.

“Ask away,” said Michael, lying down next to her.

“Why did you call the phone s*x service that evening?” asked Chantal. “You said you didn’t want to talk about it and if that’s still the case then I don’t want to force you to answer. That is the last thing that I would want to do. I just wanted to know, you know? If you are uncomfortable answering in any way then you don’t have to answer and I’m really sorry that I asked.”

“No,” said Michael, staring at the ceiling contemplatively. “I don’t… I mean… I think it’s okay to tell you. It’s been a while now and you’ve been an incredibly important part of making me feel better. I think you, of all people, deserve to know.”

“Alright,” said Chantal. “I’m really honored that you would want to tell me.”

“It was a previous relationship,” said Michael. “I was going out with this girl, Michelle. She was… I don’t know. She made me feel so special. She made me feel like she loved me and she tricked me into thinking that I loved her back. I gave her so much. Jewelry, the down payment on her apartment. I even bought her a car! I just… I didn’t even realize that she was a con artist. All she wanted was my money. I was so utterly hoodwinked by her. I didn’t even see it coming when she told me.”

“That is so awful,” said Chantal. She hugged Michael. “I’m so sorry, baby. I… I don’t know what to say. Did you say she told you? She actually told you? That is such a ridiculous thing to do. How did she tell you? Why did she tell you? Why didn’t she just take all of the money that she had gotten from you and sneak away like a normal con artist? Why did she do something awful like that, did she have some kind of vendetta against you?”

Michael grimaced and said, “I caught her cheating. It turns out that he was her boyfriend. She got money from rich guys and then ran off with her boyfriend. When I went into the hotel room and confronted her… she just… she told me that all she had wanted from me was the money. She told me that I had never meant anything to her. I guess she did say it out of spite. She figured that there was nothing I could do to her now, she would just run away with the money. I was utterly destroyed. I spent the next week in a drunken stupor. I didn’t even know what I was doing half the time.”

“That’s so awful,” said Chantal. “That’s just… how did you even get over that? Now I understand why you told me that you thought you would never feel joy again. This was the bad experience wasn’t it? This was the very thing that made you feel like you might never be happy again. I’m so very sorry, baby. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

“I got over it by going to a counselor,” said Michael. “I just went to the counselor and told him what was going on and he really helped me. He made me feel like everything that had happened was not my fault at all. It was her fault. This was really important because without it I would never have gotten better. I would never even have begun to feel like I was worthy of feeling good again, let alone actually feeling something as profound as joy or love.

“After going to the counselor for a bit I figured that I might get better so I tried to date at the insistence of my friends but that did not go well at all. It was the kind of thing that I should have waited a while before doing but I was impatient. I wanted to make it so that I would get better at the push of a button, as it were, with the button being dating, but that’s not how this works. I had some serious trauma to get over, and I had to wait before I could get into the dating scene again.

“That’s when my friend Carlos recommended that I call the phone s*x service that you work for. He told me that it would help me keep myself in the game without really committing to anything. I was unwilling to do it but I needed something to keep my mind off my situation so I called. And I talked to you. I never thought that it would help this much and he probably didn’t either but there you go. It did help this much. It did. You helped this much. I’m so glad I did it now because you helped me get so much better.”

Chantal rested her head on Michael’s chest. She was so glad that she had made him feel better but at the same time she was uncertain now. Was this all that she meant to him? Was she just his happy pill and nothing else? Was she just his way of feeling good about himself again? She had felt like he was into her for her and nothing else but what if this was just his way of getting over his past trauma? What if after he had recovered from his trauma he would leave her because he didn’t need her anymore? Chantal was terrified and little did she know, the fear was about to get worse.