My ex lied to me about being divorced, so I ruined his reputation.

When I was a naive, 24-year-old, I met a charming and very smart and way-old a man.

Jake was 42, recently divorced, or so he told me, and had a kid that he would see on the weekends.

We met online through a poetry website where both of us used to write.

He was very aloof and stern on his comments, and not very popular on the website because

he used to always come off like an arrogant jerk.

But I really liked his poems regardless of his personality, and that's how it began.

I commented on one, and he instantly private message to me back, praising my writing and

asking me if we could collaborate on a duet together.

I'd already done it a thousand times with a few friends and people on that site I respected,

so I said, sure.

So long story short, we met on Hot Mail Messenger.

Yeah, this was nearly 11 years ago, kids, so no WhatsApp, although he did chat on

social media too. This will become relevant later. Long story short, we instantly connected. He was

funny, handsome, and really sweet underneath all of his bravado, and his dark sense of humor was right up

my alley. We spent months pulling all-nighters, just talking and writing together.

Not humble bragging, but I was pretty popular on the site, because I won a few awards,

so, by association, he became popular too. People started reading Jake's poems and commenting,

and obviously he got a huge head about it, but I digress. Our relationship became more serious after he confessed

that he was falling for me, and I was smitten, so I went along with it. We talked about my recent

breakup, and he assured me that he would never lie to me. Of course he said that, because of the

witch of an ex-wife that had started seeing someone else while they were still together, and

...