After he bought me a dinner for over $600, I blocked him. It turned out he was trying to warn me.
Penelope thought her evening couldn’t get any more difficult. But a simple meal with David turns into a journey of shocking revelations that make her question everything she thought she knew about her family and herself. What began as a dinner party quickly turns into a place where shocking truths are revealed that could change her life forever.
Have you ever been on a terrible date? I agree, yes. As for this one, let’s just say that the ending was a surprise, even though it started off well. So, it all began in the public library on what seemed like a normal day.
That’s how I met David. Being a teacher, he asked me about my favorite books, which got us talking. It didn’t take long before we were talking seriously about everything from new sci-fi to old books. It felt good to meet someone who could understand my crazy thoughts.
During our talk, David asked me to go on a dinner date without telling me first. He asked, “What’s your favorite restaurant?” I remember quietly laughing, a little shocked by how honest he was.
The answer I gave him was, “My favorite place is a bit much for a first date.” But I still told him about it. This lovely spot is saved for important events or just when I want to treat myself. Dinner doesn’t cost $600 every time, right?
But I suggested a cool Mexican place in the middle of us so that our first visit would be more relaxed. “They have more than 300 tequilas and the tacos with homemade tortillas are out of this world,” I said with a smile. Also, it’s not too expensive.
Even though David paid close attention, he insisted on choosing the place. Even though I really wanted those delicious tacos, I knew I had to respect his effort. When you live on opposite ends of the range in a big city with bad traffic, you have to find a way to work together.
Now I’ll talk about my favorite place to eat. This is an amazing place where small pieces of heaven are served with drinks made by mixologists who have won the James Beard award. I go there sometimes just to relax with a drink and enjoy the fancy setting.
After some thought, David suddenly urged that we go to my favorite fancy restaurant. What did I have to say anyway? It is, after all, my favorite place. We then left.
The evening began in a lovely way. We had appetizers, which were those tasty little bits I talked about earlier, and the drinks were still interesting.
Dinner was served, one beautiful dish after another, and there was a lot of talk and laughing. I don’t usually have dessert at events unless they’re really special, but we did have dessert. I believed we were enjoying ourselves greatly.
But, my, how things changed that night. After paying the large amount, which was obviously more than $600, something unexpected happened.
My card fell out of my bag because it was a habit and hit the table. Things began to go wrong after David took it up. He didn’t just hand it back; he really looked at it.
After that, he did something that made my stomach turn to gravel: he looked over the card carefully and said in a whisper, “Be careful with this.”
I’m not sure if he meant well or not now that I think about it. At the time, though, it seemed like a very bad invasion of my privacy. Why did he have to look at my card like he didn’t care? Is there any way he could have given it back without saying that?
I quickly ended the night because I was ashamed and mad at the same time. Although I was a little stiff, I thanked him, got in a taxi, and blocked him as soon as I got home. There was no call or text.
A friend told me today that maybe I had been too hard on David after we talked about what happened. Their point was that I could have just asked him about it and that he could have had a good reason to look at my card.
But at that point, all I could think about was how he ruined the night and my mood. So, while I was still thinking about the terrible dinner, life chose to throw me another surprise.
David was outside my house just two days after I blocked him. You did, in fact, hear that. He looked uncomfortable and sorry, like he needed to say something important.
“Penelope, I’m so sorry,” he said, and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he really meant it. (“Penelope Smith, I had to make sure it was you.”)
Even though I was confused at this point, I paid attention as he took a deep breath and then told me something shocking that would change my whole life. He said, “I’m your half-brother,” but his voice was barely above a whisper.
I blinked as I tried to understand what he said. David, the guy I said no to at the library date not long ago, how could he be my half-brother? He told me that the man I had always thought of as my father was not really my biological father. In fact, it was his father who slept with my mother. It sounded like something from a soap show.
The days that followed went by quickly. We chose to get DNA testing done because this claim was too important to just take on faith. After I got the test results, the world did have one more surprise for me: it turned out that my sister and I were twins.
As I held the results in my hands, I felt a lot of different emotions. I was shocked and seemed to be interested in my unknown half-brother in a strange way. I wasn’t sure if I should tell my parents or not. A lot of things could be found out with this kind of information.
At some point, I realized that some facts are just too important to ignore, no matter what. I chose to tell them, in my own way and on my own terms. While that was going on, David and I started to carefully build the bond between brothers that we never had.
There was a friendship growing under all the weirdness and awkwardness. It wasn’t what I thought it would be after our meet-cute in the library, but it could have been just as important.
That’s all there is to it, folks. A family get-together turned into an identity problem instead of a dinner date. Doesn’t it seem like life works in strange ways?
Fiction has been used to make the story more interesting, but the ideas behind it come from real people and events. Names, characters, and other details have been changed to protect privacy and make the story better. If there are any similarities to real people, living or dead, or real events, it was an accident and not the author’s purpose.
The distributor and author don’t take responsibility for any misunderstandings and don’t say anything about how true the events or characters are. The story is given “as is,” and the characters’ thoughts are their own, not those of the author or editor.
