by Tammy Walsh
She dabbed at the corners of her eyes and sniffed.
“As a mother, I never like to think negatively of my child,” she said. “Except, by now I’m used to Dyrel’s lies and distortions. But I fear the whispers I heard aren’t lies. They are the truth.
“I was told you did not meet this lovely lady the way you led us to believe. Your charming story was just that. A story. It is not true. Dyrel made me a promise that he would mend his ways and set about creating a new life. He knew I wanted him to find a good woman to help support him, to encourage him when he needed it.
“That was why he went to a matchmaking company and purchased Vicky.”
The family gasped again, louder this time, and more than one muttered under their breath and shook their heads in disgust.
“Now, I don’t blame you, my dear,” Dyrel’s mom said. “You’re innocent in all this. The same way we are. He caught you in his web of lies. He took you and educated you in Titan customs. In exchange, you would get to return home. You’re not a scout sent here to look for trading opportunities. You’re here to fool me into believing you and he are in love.
“I’ll be honest. You had me fooled. I really did think there was something between you. But it appears I have been lied to yet again. That’s why, I’ve decided, to cut Dyrel off from his inheritance indefinitely but only if what I’ve been told is true.”
She turned her head slightly but didn’t look at Dyrel.
“Well?” she said. “Is what I said true?”
My mouth felt dry.
I wanted to answer for him, to make him tell the truth. But I knew that, after everything he’d gone through in buying and educating me, he would lie to his mother again if he had to.
He worked his mouth and took no notice of the dozens of disapproving eyes glaring at him. They were invisible to him.
He removed his napkin and placed it on the table. Finally, he nodded.
“It’s true,” he said.
The family gasped for a third time. Some of the women with a slightly frailer disposition fanned themselves for fear of fainting.
I’d never been so humiliated my entire life.
“I see,” his mom said.
Despite knowing in her heart what the truth was, she still looked disappointed. She wasn’t even angry. It was the look of someone who’d grown used to lies.
“Then you leave me no choice,” she said. “I will remove you from your inheritance. I will hire the best candidate we have for the job and put a warning out to the rest of the family here and now. Do not aid him financially. If you do, and I hear about it, you will also be cut off from the family. I don’t do this with any pleasure but I refuse to let family money destroy my one and only son. If he wants to destroy himself, he’s going to have to earn the money and do it himself.”
She stood up and turned.
Dyrel placed his palm on his mother’s hand.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
“I’m not doing this,” she said, her voice ice cold. “You’ve done this to yourself. How far you’ve fallen, my son.”
Fearing she might burst into tears, she hastened toward the exit.
I could hardly breathe. My heart was in my throat and I was suffering from a panic attack. I had been exposed for the fraud I was. I placed my hands on the tabletop and pushed myself up onto my feet. I hurried toward the far door.
Dyrel couldn’t meet his family’s eyes. He followed after me. Within seconds we were out the door and inside the shuttlecraft, heading home.
The evening had been a complete and total disaster.
I didn’t feel sick once the entire way home. I was too busy dwelling on Dyrel’s mom’s words to even remember we were floating high the air and heading back to the city.
The look of hurt in her face, the pain in her voice…
It was too much to bear.
We traveled in silence. Dyrel opened his mouth several times to speak but no words came out.
His mom was never meant to discover the truth. When Dyrel first told me about his mom cutting him off from his inheritance, I pictured a dragon lady. A terrible woman who breathed fire. I never expected her to be such a kind and considerate person.
But she was.
This was one lie of many he’d told over the years.
It made me wonder if anything else he’d said or done over the past ten days had been genuine or part of some other lie.
We entered the city limits in what felt like record time.
He pulled into his building’s parking lot. When the ship sat down, he didn’t move to leave.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I brought you into this. You didn’t deserve it. Neither did my mom. I’m sorry.”
“What is done is done,” I said.
I climbed out of the shuttlecraft and approached the elevator. He joined me a moment later. Together, we returned to his apartment.
Where his home had felt modern and chic before, now it only represented his den of lies. The place he hid so he didn’t have to live his true life.
“Are you hungry?” he said.
“No,” I said.
I marched through the apartment to my room. I switched on the door lock. It was the first time I felt like I needed it.
I grabbed a bag and began to stuff it with my things. I wouldn’t need much for the trip home.
The tears came to my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.
I kept returning to the image of his mother and that sad, broken look on her face.
The look of someone who’d lost all hope.
It had been her own son who’d done that to her.
And I had been a part of that plan.
A timid knock came at the door.
“Can I come in?” Dyrel said.
“Not right now,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from breaking.
“Can we talk?”
You can if you want.
When I didn’t reply, he took it as confirmation he could speak.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that tonight,” he said. “I didn’t think she would learn about what happened. But the truth is… although trying to keep my inheritance might have been my original plan, it wasn’t what I wanted later.”
You wanted more?
“Things changed when I met you. I never thought I would care so much about you. This thing we have, it was always meant to be a business relationship, as you said. But it’s so much more than that now. At least, to me, it is.”
A hot wad formed in the back of my throat and my breath rasped through my nose. It stung and turned hot.
I didn’t want to weep.
Not now.
Not when I’d already made up my mind about what I was going to do next.
I took a series of deep breaths and moved to the bathroom. I removed my makeup and the pins holding my hair in place. I washed my face and moved back into the bedroom.
I had allowed myself to fall in love with Dyrel, despite knowing what his plan was and my part in it.
Why didn’t it bother me before?
Because I didn’t know his mom before. I didn’t know she was a kind person.
Dyrel never lied to me about her. I just never asked.
I zipped the bag shut and moved to the bedroom door. I took another deep breath and unlocked it.
Dyrel stood right there before me.
I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye.
“I want to leave,” I said.
“It’s late,” he said. “If we have something to eat, something to drink, talk, maybe you’ll think differently—”
“I want my money and I want to leave now.”
He looked me over.
“I understand this has come as a shock,” he said. “But I don’t want you to leave.”
“The deal was for me to meet your mom and try to convince her to let you keep your inheritance,” I said, still looking at his chest. “Success or failure, the payment is the same. That was t
he deal. Or were you lying to me too?”
His arms lowered to his sides and his body hunched over. I might have dealt him a powerful blow to the solar plexus.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t lie to you. Follow me and I’ll give you what I promised.”
He turned and headed to his office.
It was small but functional.
He moved to the back and removed a holographic painting from the wall. He placed his hand on a panel and the safe made a high-pitched ringing noise. The door opened.
He reached inside and came out with a single coin.
He handed it to me.
“Use this to buy your ticket,” he said. “I suggest you buy the best seat you can before my funds are frozen and stripped from me.”
I took it but didn’t turn to leave yet.
“Thank you for buying and freeing me from the matchmaking company,” I said.
“And thank you for helping me,” he said stiffly. “Sorry I’m such a disappointment.”
You were never a disappointment, I wanted to tell him. If I said them, it would be like pulling the stopper and I would burst into tears.
“Do you want me to give you a lift to the spaceport?” he said.
I shook my head. Definitely not.
“How about I call you a taxi?” he said.
My eyes were already filling up. I nodded.
He called the taxi company and escorted me to the front door.
“I’ll walk you down,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I’ll manage.”
“Thank you for helping me,” he said. “Again.”
Neither of us could say what we really wanted to say.
The words went unspoken.
I reached up and wrapped my arms around him. I pulled back quickly, already sensing I would lose myself to him if I wasn’t careful.
“Bye,” I said.
I hustled out of his apartment, certain I would never see him again.
It wasn’t what I wanted.
It wasn’t what I needed.
But right then, it sure felt that way.
Dyrel
Silence is deafening in the heat of battle.
It was an expression I heard many times growing up but never fully appreciated its meaning until Vicky left me.
She packed her things and walked out the door, leaving me in an apartment empty and devoid of her presence.
The meeting with mom had not gone well.
In fact, it couldn’t have gone much worse.
I ran through the situation and wondered how she’d discovered the truth.
Mom had left the room and when she came back, she was informed of the entire situation.
She knew my plan for keeping my inheritance, how I came to meet Vicky, and how I’d been training her for our mission of subterfuge.
None of it made any sense.
I had managed to hurt not just my mom but Vicky too.
She hadn’t spoken all the way home and I couldn’t find the right words to say to her.
It wasn’t a situation I was used to finding myself in.
Especially when it came to caring about someone enough to actually take action.
I fell into an armchair and ran my hands through my hair.
Vicky wasn’t coming back.
I had hoped she couldn’t bring herself to climb in the taxi cab, that she might have a change of heart at the last minute.
That hadn’t happened.
Instead, I found myself staring out the window, watching as the cab pulled out of the parking lot and took off in the direction of the spaceport.
I peered around at the apartment.
No matter where I looked, she was there.
She lay across the sofa, naked, with that challenging look in her eye.
She gazed at me with those mesmerizing eyes of hers and that T-shirt of mine that rode up, exposing her.
I shook my head and slapped myself across the face.
“Stop it!” I said out loud. “She’s gone and it’s your fault, asshole!”
When I peered back at the sofa, she was gone.
She was never there in the first place.
I got up and turned on the hologram TV. A show was on. The images and zany noises floated through my mind but made no impression on me.
I paid no attention to it.
I gnawed on my fingers and bit at the nails. It was a habit I hadn’t done in years.
Unable to take sitting in this place any longer, I moved into my bedroom and snatched up my communicator. I cycled through the contacts until I reached the one I was looking for.
I bit my lip as it rang.
I glanced in the direction of the bed.
It was the worst place I could have looked.
Vicky was there again, writhing on the bed in ecstasy. I was on top, pounding her mercilessly. I turned away and shut the images and sounds out of my head.
It’s not real! I bellowed at myself. It’s not real!
“Hello?” Ettana said on the other end of the line.
Relief flooded my system.
“Hey,” I said. “I was wondering if—”
“Who are you talking to? Ha ha!” Ettana said. “Leave a message after the bleep.”
It was Ettana’s voicemail message.
It’d been so long since I last called, I completely forgot about it.
I hung up, growled under my breath, and typed in a message.
IS THERE A PARTY SOMEWHERE? I typed.
I put the communicator down. She was likely busy somewhere doing something. At this time of night, she was likely already at a party.
She surprised me when she replied faster than I expected.
HELLO STRANGER, she replied. NICE TO SEE YOU’RE STILL ALIVE.
HAHA, I responded.
WHAT’S THE MATTER? she typed. NO NEW GIRL TO PLAY WITH?
SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
SHAME.
WHERE ARE YOU NOW?
AT A CLUB, she typed. YOU?
WHICH CLUB?
THAT WOULD BE TELLING.
She’d always been a tease. I used to enjoy it, but right now, I needed a distraction.
WHICH CLUB? I repeated.
YOU’RE ALREADY BEHIND. YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THE FIRST FEW ROUNDS TO CATCH UP WHEN YOU GET HERE. THINK YOU’RE UP TO IT AFTER YOUR RECENT DETOX?
I snorted.
HAVE YOU EVER KNOWN ME NOT TO BE? I typed.
WE’RE AT INFERNO.
I grabbed my jacket and ran out of there.
I called a cab and it took me to the club.
The place was roaring when I arrived. It always was.
I approached the security staff, who eyeballed me, and nodded for me to head inside. I was a VIP member. At least the high price gave me certain privileges.
I found Ettana at the back of the club. She was hidden behind the velvet rope. She leaned over it and wrapped her arms around me.
“Just in time!” she said. “I ordered the drinks. Your turn to pay.”
It usually was.
I handed over a credit coin to the waitress, who tucked it in her pocket, and handed the drinks over.
I recognized some of Ettana’s party buddies but most of them were new faces. The churn rate tended to be high among partiers.
The alcohol was soothing and sloshed down my throat as I gulped it down. I let out a satisfied sigh. Finally, the memories of Vicky began to slip beneath the icy floor of alcohol.
Out of sight, out of mind.
I took a seat and luxuriated in the numbing sensation.
Alcohol.
Was there anything better?
My subconscious took the question literally and presented me with an answer.
It was a flash of a bare leg and an oversized T-shirt rising up.
It was a rhetorical question, asshole!
I took another deep swig of alcohol and reminded myself not to ask any questions.
Not even rhetorical ones.
“Wa
nt to dance?” Ettana said, extending a hand to me.
I didn’t really want to but she grabbed my arm and dragged me onto my feet anyway.
She took me to the dance floor and rubbed herself against me provocatively. She nudged my neck with her nose and slid her hands inside my jacket and over my body.
Ettana was warm and soft. The way Vicky always felt…
I took another swig of the beer.
This wasn’t so bad, I thought. I could live like this. I just needed alcohol now and then, or a hammer blow to the head, and I could almost believe she never existed.
That had been the plan after all, hadn’t it?
Even if I got my inheritance money, this was what I was going to do most days. At least, most evenings and weekends.
For a moment, I wondered why I even bothered. I mean, even if the plan worked, I’d still be partying every chance I got. I would have still ended up losing my job at the company. And my inheritance along with it.
So, when I really thought about it, failing to keep my money wasn’t such a big deal. I’d have only ended up drinking it away.
I liked the feel of Ettana against me. I could almost believe it wasn’t her I was holding. I wrapped my arms around her, my eyes shut, and smiled.
When I opened my eyes, I noticed the other dancers around us. They were jumping and twirling as if listening to some other dance track to the one that was actually playing on the giant speakers.
And there, dancing sensuously, running her hands over herself as she gazed at me, was Vicky. She blew me a kiss as a pair of dancers passed in front of her.
When I looked for her among the crowd again, she was no longer there.
No, wait.
There she was.
In the arms of another Titan.
I growled and pulled Ettana away from me, the sour taste of jealousy making my brain hurt. When I peered back at Vicky, she was replaced by another girl.
Pretty enough, but not Vicky.
My Vicky.
“What’s up?” Ettana said.
Yes, what was up?
Vicky was a woman. There were plenty more of them out there.
But that wasn’t true. There was only one Vicky.
And I had let her go.
“Alcohol,” I said. “I need more alcohol.”