At some point, some sordid little point, J. and I started seeing each other. I'm not really sure, frankly, how we progressed to that status. I just know that she tired of Player and sort of worked her way down to me. Yeah, I know. That should have been clue one. It wasn't.

J. was a really cute girl. Really cute, really fun, really overly hormoned. I'm going to omit those bits because, well, they're none of your beeswax. Besides, they're not central to the tale. Really. This girl had so much goin' on, none of it good. I really found out the details as we went along.

I honestly didn't really think about her age at first. But she was 18 and was living with her parents. She also was an only child and her parents basically treated her like a peer. That's not to say they treated her like she was older than her age, they just acted like they were 18. They were super-crazed church goers and J. sang in the choir. Yeah, that's right. She was a choir girl.

I had just bought a home in Atlanta when all this transpired and J., it seems, was very excited about the possibility of moving out of her parents' place. You guessed it, she thought she would move in with me. After about two weeks of dating she came to my house with a veritable hope chest of domestic items. Silverware, vases, artwork. It all appeared on my doorstep one Saturday afternoon. Not knowing what to say, I watched as she played decorator. My parents also happened to stop by that afternoon. They loved her. Seems that J. always knew how to make a good impression.

Shortly after I started seeing J., Meredith reminded me of a story. Word on the street was that J. had, um, befriended one of the guys installing cable in the building about a year before I even knew who she was. The rumor was that one day she went to one of the nearby hotels with him during lunch. Yeah. This rumor was supported by the fact he sent her flowers the next day and that the cable vendor took him off the job. Apparently he put the hotel room on his corporate credit card. A brilliant match made in heaven, those two. At any rate, I told Meredith that wasn't true. How did I know? Right! I asked. Surely she wouldn't lie to me. So, with no worries I continued on.

J. also had an interesting side enterprise. She'd purchase clothes for the other women in her department. They'd see an outfit that she was wearing and she would tell them that she'd pick up something similar for them. Thing is, she was able to get things really cheaply. She never revealed her secret and they, apparently, never questioned her. Why look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

I, too, wasn't questioning anything at this point. That would soon change. Unfortunately, not soon enough...