My only satisfaction is that the tramp he left me for is known as the opossum and he seemed very unhappy

Peter was a “dream come true.” I was set up as his blind date for his fraternity’s Homecoming my freshman year. He was a tall, dark, (pre-med), southern gentleman. Not to mention he was a senior and his nick-name had been established in my sorority as “Pretty Peter,” he was THAT gorgeous. We hit it off at the dance, and started dating the next weekend. We talked for hours a day and “closed-down” the library almost every day of the week. He opened doors, randomly came to visit me in my dorm, took care of me when I drank too much, and picked me up when I was being “sexiled” by my roommate. I was smitten; he seemed too good to be true.

I stopped calling Peter over winter break just so that I would know that he was the one making effort. He called me every day, including Christmas. I was excited that I hadn’t imagined that we had a good thing going and it might survive a one-month hiatus. New Years rolled around and Peter and I were both heading back down to Bloomington for some parties. I had planned on being with my friends the entire time but he invited me to “stop by” the party he was throwing with his friends at their off-campus house. I told him I would and was really happy that I was going to be spending part of New Years with him.

On New Years I talked to one of my other friends at his party and told her I was coming as soon as I could get a cab and she said Peter had been asking if I was coming. I left the lame party I was at with my friends, and got a cab to Peter’s. When I got there, I was talking with some of my friends and some of the guys he lived with before I realized I hadn’t seen Peter yet. I told the people I was talking to I’d be right back and went up to his room to look for him. He wasn’t there. Actually, he wasn’t anywhere. I went back down to some of his friends and asked where Peter was. At first, they were just telling me they didn’t know. But the problem is they did know. Finally someone got enough balls to tell me Peter had left.

“Where did he go?” I asked.

“To ISU,” whoever it was replied.

“Why would he go there? This is his party.” I was trying not to be upset. I didn’t know what was going on for sure yet. And Peter wouldn’t do that to me.

“To see some girl…”

“What?! What girl? I mean… who else…” No. Not happening. How could he be calling anyone else at 11-3am to talk for no reason? Why would he tell me to come over if he knew he was leaving? Particularly, if he knew he was leaving to see “some girl!”

“I’m sorry. We don’t even know her,” My source of information was breaking. Peter’s friends liked me, they didn’t get it either. “We have never even seen her before. I’m sorry. I don’t know what he’s thinking.” He was being sympathetic now. But I don’t know if he really had a choice because I think this is about the time the tears started streaming. Being drunk didn’t help me control my emotions either.

I began running around Peter’s house hysterically crying and yelling. In a numb, trance-like state, my incredulous, hysterical mantra was, “how could he do this to me?” And that was exactly what I said on his voicemail around 11:50 that night. Not only had he hurt me, he had embarrassed me by allowing me to show up and get my heart broken at his house, in front of all of his friends, and not even have to balls to give me fair warning. To make matters worse, one of my own sorority sisters, who had been rooting for us to not work out, was yelling from one room to another, “Peter won’t be back tonight, I sent him so ISU…you can sleep in his room, he definitely won’t be back until tomorrow.” Don’t twist the dagger or anything, Maureen.

At midnight I was outside waiting for a cab ride back to my friends, but one of Peter’s friends let me sleep in his bed instead of having to go back, and when I left the house at 1pm the next day, Peter still wasn’t back.

Peter didn’t get the balls to call me until Wednesday. If you don’t remember, New Years was on a Friday… calculation: 5 days. Solution: Peter was a big pussy.

He put on a pretty good show, apology and all. By that time I was over being angry and only got upset again. I let him stammer on for a few minutes and asked him what he wanted to do, if he even wanted to talk again and he said he would leave it up to me. I told him I didn’t know what I wanted to do. We never really talked again.

Update: I ran into Peter and his lovely ISU girl a few weeks ago at a beer pong tournament. I was expecting a gorgeous, or at least well-dressed, girl to be on his arm. Instead I saw a short, “opossum” –looking, (I can thank Peter’s friend for that nickname), girlfriend and an unhappy-looking Peter. I was told by my friends that Peter wouldn’t stop looking over at me, so much so that his girlfriend was noticing and they got into an argument. I never made eye contact with him, and cannot confirm such allegations.

Peter has since graduated and his relationship status is unknown to me.