The Wrong Read

Okay, so apparently I'm getting a lot of stuff wrong lately.

Here are two things I got right:

1. Mr. WPY likes to discuss poker with me


2. There is no whiff of romance between us.

Here is the big thing I got completely wrong:

1. There's no girlfriend.

How do I know this?

I met the girlfriend.
At his place.
Where she was going to be spending the night.

Case closed.

She is petite, shapely, pretty, young: just exactly what I might have expected. (Oh, and she has a son, who apparently doesn't always live with her.) They make a lovely couple.

Mr. WPY and I talked poker for nearly four hours. She listened in for awhile and then drifted off to read on her own and eventually fall asleep on the sofa.

Reality has a way of setting our fantasies into proper perspective, eventually. I guess I'm grateful to have this truth clarified for me in a timely way. I have always believed that the truth will set me free. So now I'm free to continue to cultivate the friendship on well-defined terms, and I can choose to do so or not.

One further detail. Mr. WPY has a small cross, with a label "faith" at its base, sitting atop his computer monitor. That'll make for an interesting conversation one day.