Like a traffic cop, Mac threw up her hand. “You paid her bills?”
He shrugged. “Initially she was trying to save for her own place, then . . .
It got to be a habit.”
Vision in White
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I remember the first time my then-boyfriend asked me for money and I didn't feel like I could say no. We were parked in the lot of a train station where he often picked me up. Since he'd recently quit a job he hated and was only working part-time, he needed extra cash for gas to keep picking me up and visiting me, he said. He'd calculated that half the cost of the drives he took for my sake came out to $20 a month.
Nobody other than a cab driver had ever asked me to compensate them for a ride, and the exchange felt oddly transactional for two people who had been dating for a year and a half. Plus, I paid for my own train tickets, which I thought made us even. But he said it would be hard for him to see me as much if I didn't pitch in that monthly $20, so I did.
But it didn't stop there.
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Mac took a moment to absorb. “Let me just sum all that up, take it down to its basic formula. Because its one I know very well. She maneuvered you into providing her with housing—for which she paid nothing.”
“I could hardly ask her for rent.”
“She shared none of the household expenses, and in fact sweet-talked you into fronting her for her expenses. You probably lent her cash from time to time. You'll never see that again. You bought her things—clothes, jewelry. If you balked, she used tears or sex to smooth that out and get what she was after.”
“Well, I suppose, but—”
“Let me finish it out. When she got tired of it, or saw something shinier, she lied, cheated, betrayed, then laid it all out as your fault for not caring enough. Would that be about right?”
Vision in White