I had been on three dates with Evan, and until that night, nothing about him had seemed unusual.
\nHe was charming, polite, and always knew exactly what to say.
\nWe went to a quiet restaurant downtown, had dinner, and talked for nearly two hours.
\nWhen the bill came, Evan handed the waitress his card.
\nA minute later, she returned looking nervous.
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, sir,\u201d she said. \u201cYour card was declined.\u201d
\nHis face went pale.
\nHe quickly pulled out another card and paid without saying much.
\nAs we were leaving, the waitress suddenly touched my arm.
\n\u201cI lied,\u201d she whispered.
\nThen she pressed the receipt into my hand and walked away.
\nOn the back, she had written two words:
\n\u201cCALL ME.\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt uneasy, but I waited until I got home before calling the number she had added underneath.
\nShe told me she recognized Evan.
\nA few months earlier, her younger sister had dated him.
\nAccording to her, he had borrowed money, used her car, and disappeared after convincing her to cover several bills.
\nShe said she had pretended his card was declined because she wanted a reason to slow things down and warn me privately.
\nThe next morning, I confronted him.
\nHe denied everything at first.
\nThen I mentioned the sister\u2019s name.
\nHe hung up.
\nI never heard from him again.
\nThat waitress may have saved me from learning the truth the hard way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had been on three dates with Evan, and until that night, nothing about him had seemed unusual. He was charming, polite, and always knew exactly what to say. We went to a quiet restaurant downtown, had dinner, and talked for nearly two hours. When the bill came, Evan handed the waitress his card. A …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10243,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10241\/revisions\/10243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}