I had a hot fling<\/a> with a handsome, brown-eyed stranger one weekend away in the Hamptons.\u00a0 <\/p>\nHe was sarcastic and direct, with a sensitive side. We had instant chemistry. I\u2019d never been in love before.<\/p>\n
Afterward, I returned to New York, and he went back to Boston. We texted and drank wine together over Facetime. He showed me his two cats. How his husky could howl \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
NY Post staffer Jeanette Settembre has written a new novel based on an experience she had years ago. Alexandra Genova<\/p>\n
He told me he\u2019d \u201csave up and plan a trip to New York soon,\u201d to visit me, if I wanted. I did.<\/p>\n
Then I didn\u2019t hear from him for several days. Instead, his friend sent me a headline about a drunk driver who killed two people in a crash. It was him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was in shock. How could he have been so reckless?<\/p>\n
Growing up, I had perfect attendance in school and always made the honor roll. I had never even gotten a parking ticket.<\/p>\n
My life, at that point, was near-perfect. I had a dream job as a food columnist at a major newspaper, eating at Michelin-star restaurants and interviewing celebrities. I didn\u2019t want to derail everything I had worked so hard to build. I knew I needed to cut off all contact with him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Settembre was 25 when she had a summer fling with a handsome stranger in the Hamptons that took an unexpected turn. Courtesy of Jeanette Settembre<\/p>\n
Instead, I texted: \u201cHeard about what happened. Hope you\u2019re okay. Thinking of you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The next time we spoke on Facetime, his face was scarred. Glass from the windshield still pierced his forehead. <\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe you\u2019re still talking to me,\u201d he told me. He tried to convince me not to, but I could feel how desperately he needed me..<\/p>\n
We kept talking and texting. He attended AA meetings and prayed daily with a rabbi asking for forgiveness.<\/p>\n
Ashamed of his crime and uncertain about the future, I kept our relationship a secret. I thought he was my best friend.<\/p>\n
Jeanette Settembre<\/p>\n
He was arraigned and made bail in the fall. When he called me to tell me he was visiting his brother in New York that December, I didn\u2019t know how to feel. I was nervous \u2013 I didn\u2019t want to meet his family and get more attached. But, I also thought it would be nice to see him. Soon, I was applying red lipstick in the back of a cab headed to his brother\u2019s apartment building. <\/p>\n
When we kissed in the elevator of his brother\u2019s downtown apartment, my mind went back to the night we met. He remembered my perfume.<\/p>\n
He returned a few weeks later and we spent New Year\u2019s Eve together. Tears streamed down his face as we watched the fireworks from a boat on the Hudson, feeling guilty that he was able to take in a moment he took from the victims and their loved ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our relationship unfolded while he awaited trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Settembre\u2019s new book is a dark romance called \u201cLittle Red Flags.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019d travel down from Boston on the Bolt Bus to see me with sunflowers every few weeks. <\/p>\n
When I visited him in Boston for the first time, he cooked me breakfast, and researched the best Italian restaurant in the city, where he told me he loved me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That spring, we visited his beloved grandmother in North Carolina, marveling at the Blue Ridge Mountains together.<\/p>\n
Ashamed of his crime and uncertain about the future, I kept our relationship a secret. I thought he was my best friend.<\/p>\n
We were together about a year before he was granted a plea bargain. He pled guilty and got seven years.<\/p>\n
People flock to The Hamptons in East Long Island every summer to get away from the city and still be seen. John Roca\/Freelance<\/p>\n
It took her years to extricate herself from the relationship \u2014 and find the courage to tell her story. Alexandra Genova<\/p>\n
I told myself I would cut off contact with him when he went to prison. Instead, I found myself in a sea of stroller moms at an Upper East Side Ann Taylor Loft, searching for an outfit to wear to visit him. <\/p>\n
Initially, visiting him in prison felt daunting, but I got the hang of it. It was like a DMV. You pick a number, fill out a form with the inmate\u2019s number, wait to be called in a group and go through a metal detector.<\/p>\n
The first time I went to see him, we talked for five hours straight holding hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a medium security facility so they allowed lengthier visits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He pointed out the inmates who were \u201clifers\u201d and the white-collar criminals in for money laundering.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I saw wives visiting husbands, kids visiting fathers.<\/p>\n
The only thing I could bring into our visit was a plastic card loaded with $40 for the vending machine.<\/p>\n
Medium security prisons run on vending machines stocked with bottled Dunkin\u2019 drinks and a calzone type snack called a Rip-n-Dip. Little luxuries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Westhampton village in the Hamptons gets filled with people over the summer. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n
Catching up over comfort food, it felt like it was only us, despite being in this dark, harrowing\u00a0place.<\/p>\n
In lieu of cologne, Ben used a fragrance sample from a magazine to smell good for me the handful of times I visited. <\/p>\n
As his sentence wore on, Ben became increasingly controlling and manipulative. He would make me feel guilty if I sounded distracted on a call or didn\u2019t attend his family\u2019s events, like a Zoom Passover, in his place.<\/p>\n
Two years into his sentence, I told him I needed to move on. He cruelly told me no one would ever love me as much as he did.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He needed constant reassurance that I wouldn\u2019t leave him, which I couldn\u2019t, of course, give. He told me that this experience would make our bond stronger, that I was lucky to have found someone who loved me so much<\/p>\n
I grew increasingly depressed. I was consumed with guilt and lost my appetite for food and life. I started having panic attacks that necessitated trips to the ER. <\/p>\n
Initially, she writes of how Ben would visit her on the Bolt bus as he awaited trial. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Friends began moving through milestones in life \u2014 marriage, kids \u2014 while I was stuck in neutral.<\/p>\n
I stopped answering his calls, started seeing a therapist and wrote the words \u201cJust Keep Moving Forward\u201d on a piece of paper and taped it above my desk.\u00a0 One day at a time, I took back my life.<\/p>\n
He was released from prison after five years. He never contacted me. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m now 34 and married to a wonderful man. For years, I was too ashamed to tell this story.<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019ve written a novel about it \u2014 a dark romance called \u201cLittle Red Flags\u201d \u2014 out tomorrow. Sharing it with the world has been healing. <\/p>\n
After all these years, I\u2019m finally free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NY Post staffer Jeanette Settembre\u2019s new novel, \u201cLittle Red Flags,\u201d is based on a dark romance. Settembre\u2019s summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2878,303,232,9,11,10,49,51,50,36147,6493,255],"class_list":["post-219997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-books","tag-crime","tag-lifestyle","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-romance","tag-sex-relationships","tag-the-hamptons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}