The last few days had been such a whirlwind of excitement, and I was pretty tired, though. I just couldn’t decide what I wanted to do.
“Chase,” I said as I came out of the shower wrapped in my towel. “Salina texted me and asked if I wanted to meet her for some bowling.”
“No,” he said firmly.
I had been prepared to tell her no again. But I had planned on saying it because I thought Chase needed me to help take care of him. The way he responded just put my defenses up right away. He wasn’t interested in discussing anything, he just said no at the first mention of her name.
“Well, I wasn’t exactly asking your permission.”
I stormed off toward the bedroom and put my clothes on. There was just something that I didn’t like about being denied something. It wasn’t as if I was asking his permission. I just wanted to talk the idea over with him. But for him to be such a jackass about it and outright tell me no, I couldn’t go? Well, that did not sit well with me at all.
“You don’t know who she is. You don’t know anything about her. She could work for Escabar for all we know,” Chase said from the living room.
“That didn’t seem to bother you when I flew halfway around the country to meet you. I didn’t know you, either. Yet I still came.”
“Jordan, it’s a bad idea.”
“I think there’s more to this story than you are telling me. Either you tell me why this Escabar guy is such bad news, or I’m going to go bowling with my new friend.”
He sat there and defiantly refused to talk. He could have confessed to what was really going on. He could have apologized for how he had talked to me. But he didn’t do any of that. I started to wonder if this was the Chase that I really hadn’t known yet. Was this the guy who had a hard time keeping a girlfriend? I could see why! No woman wanted to be with a controlling man who didn’t even want her to have friends.
I waited for him to sweetly ask me to stay. If he had said he needed help getting around the house or if he had said he was in a lot of pain, I would have gladly stayed to help him. But he didn’t. Instead, he turned mean. I waited for him to make any effort to show that he knew what he was doing was wrong. But he didn’t even make the effort.
“You are not going anywhere, Jordan. You don’t understand the dangers that are here in America.”
“Chase, I’m not stupid. And, in fact, being with you these last few days, I have gotten to experience more dangers than I could have ever imagined.”
“Don’t go.”
“I’m not going to stay here just because you don’t like the idea of me having a friend outside of you. This girl was just some woman new to town I met at the store. There is no reason to get all worried about her. I’m going to meet her at Kings Bowling Alley.”
I had had enough. I didn’t like the way Chase was trying to control me. It didn’t seem like something that he normally did with women, and I just couldn’t figure out why he was acting like that with me. But no matter what his reasons were, I wasn’t sticking around to argue with him. I hardly knew him at all, and I certainly wasn’t going to let him boss me around.
“Jordan, you won’t be able to find your way back here. Please, don’t leave. I’m sorry I argued with you,” Chase said as I opened the door.
“I’ll only be gone two or three hours. I’ll make sure to watch for anyone following me, and I promise I’ll be able to find my way back here. I have the GPS thing on the phone you gave me, so I’ll just punch the address in.”
I made my way out to the car and left without another word.
I felt bad for arguing with Chase, especially since he had recently had such a horrible day. But I didn’t want him to think he was going to be able to control my life. If things were going to work out between the two of us, then there needed to be some rules for how he was going to treat me. The number one rule had to be that he wasn’t going to boss me around or think that he could control my life. That just wasn’t going to happen.
As I drove away, I was scared to death that I wasn’t going to be able to find my way back. Chase was certainly right about that. It was starting to get dark out, and the road was hard enough to see in the light. But I made sure I had the address in my phone and just hoped that I would be able to find my way back using the GPS.
It was about more than me going to have fun with a friend. I hated that Chase was trying to boss me around. That just wasn’t the kind of guy I wanted to be with. I didn’t see why he was so worried about me. Obviously, I could take care of myself. I had made it all the way from Liechtenstein to Atlanta without dying. I was pretty sure I could enjoy an ev
ening of bowling and make it back to him just fine.
***
I pulled up to Kings Bowling Alley on the west side of Atlanta. It was a really nice place, and any trepidation I initially had disappeared as I walked into the building. It wasn’t some dive of a location. Instead, the bowling alley looked like it was using state of the art technology and had a ton of families hanging out and enjoying their day.
“Jordan, over here!” I heard Salina call from one of the lanes.
She was sitting there with Salvador, but he seemed preoccupied with trying to set up the game on the high-tech electronics.
I was excited to see the two of them and already felt like we were friends. It wasn’t that often women actually came up and talked to me back home. Most of the time, they thought I was stuck up or that I was too pretty for them to talk to. I loved that Salina wasn’t afraid to talk to me and had gone out of her way to ask me to come hang out. It felt like a great start to a new friendship in America.
“Hey, how are you?” I asked.