Trashley: Forty-Five
Cuffing Season
After I broke up with Ashley, she did not go off gently into the good night. Instead, she became fixated on winning me back, even though I told her our relationship wasn’t salvageable and that no amount of money, gifts, or future faking would get us back together. I told her repeatedly she wasn’t welcome at my place, which she interpreted as an invitation.
I watched with dread as her Uber got closer.
It had been a month since our breakup, and I was still processing everything. Shortly after learning Ashley lied about her grandparents dying and leaving her everything, I discovered she had a long history of catfishing women on dating apps by pretending to be a British man named Duncan. I’d barely wrapped my brain around the catfishing when I went through her things and discovered she was deeply in debt to the IRS, and a variety of creditors despite acting wealthy. Forty-five seconds after I learned she was in financial ruin, I found out she had been leading both me and her wife Cecelia on, acting like we would buy a house together in LA while promising Cecelia she’d move back to Minnesota and get an apartment nearby so they could co-parent the kids.
Once I started talking to Cecelia, I realized everything she warned me about the previous summer was true. That Ashley was lying and that her family would cover…
