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#MyWorstDate Story: 'We Thought You Got Kidnapped'

Vampires, fake girlfriends, and a broken flip phone, oh my!

By Caitlyn SiehlPublished 6 years ago 7 min read
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When you're sixteen years old and obsessed with Twilight (Listen, it was 2009 and we all make mistakes), it's easy to pine after men who don't deserve you.

I've since come a long way in terms of understanding when someone is bad news, but as a teenager, I overlooked a lot in order to enjoy the feeling of someone giving me their attention...including going on a date with a guy who was very bad at pretending to have a girlfriend. I knew from the beginning that this girlfriend wasn't real, and present day me cannot fathom why I didn't roll my eyes at this dude and walk away sooner.

But he was a boy and he said nice things, right? What more could an attention-starved 16-year-old want?

So our "date" was a trip to the movies to see the second installment of the Twilight saga, New Moon. Skinny jeans were just a twinkle in society's eye at this point, so I wore bell-bottom jeans and a blue cardigan that made my boobs look nice (they didn't). I remember throwing up by the side of my house when he finally texted me on my LG bedazzled flip phone to tell me he was out front.

By the time we got to the theater, I was ready for round two of puking, but this time, it was because he was showing off his car by randomly slamming his foot on the gas pedal, jerking my head forward and then back at least four times.

"Hold on, I gotta call my girlfriend," he said on the way inside, slowing down so that we were no longer walking together. I managed to catch a glimpse, however, of the blank home screen of his phone as he went to press it against his ear.

Liar, I thought, and yet I still stayed. Because his shirt was soft and he had a beard.

I paid for my own ticket and waited by the warm glass of the popcorn display. Mom gave me 20 bucks and I was contemplating whether or not to get something to eat when he found me, his phone just a bump in his pocket now.

"Sorry about that. She just missed me. You ready?"

I said yes for all the same reasons I previously stated, plus I now felt some strange compulsion to be better than this fictional girlfriend that he created for the sole purpose of making me, the girl who ALREADY AGREED TO GO TO THE MOVIES WITH HIM, jealous.

The theater was, naturally, full of teenage girls. I rolled my eyes because I was at that lovely age where I thought I was a special snowflake and "not like those other girls," even though I was literally in a movie theater about to cry over a sparkly, possessive man vampire—a manpire, if you will.

"Are you guys on a date?"

We both turned around at the same time to see a group of girls looking at us curiously.

"No, I'm taken by the lord," was his response, to which I stared at him open-mouthed. He winked.

The girls behind us giggled, and so did I.

"Are you in love," one of them asked almost directly after with this look of careless, unbothered curiosity that made me almost admire her.

"With the lord," I chimed in, my chest puffing up a bit at the look of surprise on my date-not-really-date's face.

"Wait, you're not on a date?"

"No, I have a girlfriend," he'd shed all pretense at that point, seemingly bored of the conversation and ready to focus his attention elsewhere.

Before the conversation could go any further, the movie started. I turned my attention towards the screen, my body curling in on itself when my date slowly pulled his arm rest up (thanks for that little feature, Lowe's) so that there was no barrier between us. I no longer cared that his shirt was soft or that he had a beard. I checked and double-checked my phone, secretly praying that my mom had frantically texted me, demanding that I come home immediately.

After two hours of Robert Pattinson fighting the alien inhabiting his body and Kristen Stewart attempting to do the same, the movie finally, blissfully, ended. My left arm was unpleasantly warm from where he had been pressing against me all night and I couldn't stop scratching at it.

"I can take you home now, if you want."

I'm sixteen years old and it's literally Wednesday night. Like, I have school tomorrow. Where the fuck else are you going to take me? The stars?

Here's where it gets bad. Or, well, worse.

My date got another "call" from his "girlfriend" and threw up his hand as if to say "I'll be right back." I nodded my head and went back to looking at my phone. It was well after midnight. Why hadn't my mom called me or even texted me? Odd.

I sent her a quick update to let her know I was still still alive, then headed outside of the theater to wait for the unfortunate bearded man that I came with to take me home. Popcorn kernels littered the gum-stained cement of the theater entrance and I watched couple after couple file out of the revolving doors, the white clouds of their breaths mixing into one gigantic puff as they all walked through the winter chill and into their cars.

I wondered if I'd ever get to be on that end of things, some day—if, just maybe, there was a way that this stupid guy that I came with tonight could be a person I walked out of the theater with.

He never came back.

I waited outside of that theater for a good 45 minutes and he never showed up. I walked around the building looking for him, only noticing on my second lap that the silver car we'd arrived in was gone.

So I was stranded at the movie theater at 1:30 in the morning, unable to drive myself home, and my mother wasn't answering me. In fact, no one was answering me. My calls were dropping before the second ring and my texts were inexplicably going unanswered. It wasn't until a cop, presumably making his late night rounds to check for stranded teenagers who had a broken phone and no way to get home, drove through the parking lot and flashed his lights at me.

"Are you waiting for someone, miss?"

"Uh, kind of. I came here with someone but they left without me. Can—can I borrow your phone?"

The cop got out of the car, flashlight in one hand, phone in the other, and waited beside me while I called my mom. Maybe that wasn't something he was supposed to do, I'm not sure. For a cop, he didn't really ask a lot of questions.

"Who is this," my mom answered. I could hear the panic around the edges of her voice.

"Mom, it's me. My phone's bro-"

"JESUS CHRIST, CAITY, WE THOUGHT YOU GOT KIDNAPPED. WHERE ARE YOU?"

"I'm still at the movie theater. My dat—my, uh...he left without me."

The officer beside me clicked his tongue in solidarity. I handed him back his phone and told him that my mom was on her way. He waited with me for the 20 minutes it took for her to get there.

"I'm never seeing another Twilight movie ever again," I told him.

When I finally got a new phone the next day, all the texts that never came through finally...came through. Lighting up my screen with a litany of bings and vibrations was none other than my date. Or not date.

12:37: Hey sorry, one more minute. She's upset.

12:49: My gf says she didn't like that I went to the movies with someone else...

1:02: I told her it wasn't even a date.

1:05: Do you think it was a date?

1:09: It kinda was.

1:13: Come to the car so we can talk.

1:17: Fine.

Maybe "fine" will be our "never the fuck again," hm?

dating
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About the Creator

Caitlyn Siehl

Cat mom and spicy jalapeño chip eater.

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