Secrets & Lies

by Mia Ford

  I still don’t know if this will work. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to ever look at her and not remember the secrets she kept and the things she thought about me, even if it was only three years ago.

  But I can try.

  “Thank you,” she says as I go to leave.

  I know what she’s thanking me for. She’s thanking me for giving her another chance, for not giving up entirely.

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  And then I’m gone. Butterflies are swimming in my stomach now. I was so confident in my decision, both when I made it and when I blurted it out. But, now that we’ve made a plan, I’m oddly anxious about it all. When I decided to cut Jessica from my life, the path my life was going to be simple. All it meant was doing what I always did, and remaining as distant from Jessica as I could while seeing Owen.

  Now there’s so many winding roads in front of me that I don’t know which one to take anymore. What is the right course of action here? Or am I just overthinking everything again?

  Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. Now I have a date to get ready for on Tuesday, and I can only hope everything goes well.

  When I get to Jessica’s apartment on Tuesday, the butterflies that started on Sunday have already expanded into almost a full blown panic attack over the course of today. I almost messaged once or twice, and canceled the whole thing.

  I’m not ready for this. I can’t face trying this again, not after what happened last time.

  But I didn’t cancel. I owe it to myself, Jessica and Owen to at least see this one date through. I can do this. If we decide, afterward, that we aren’t to be in a relationship, then that’s what we decide, isn’t it? And that will be okay.

  I park my bike and take in a few steadying breaths. I’m here. I can get through this.

  I didn’t realize, until now, just how traumatic everything was for me. Here I am, trying to calm myself, because I haven’t gotten over what happened three years ago, try as I might. Finding the truth of the situation has even made things worse.

  Only the fact that Jessica isn’t looking at me differently now, that she still wants this despite being unsure what the full truth is, is keeping me here. I don’t think she believes I’m a murderer anymore. But she doesn’t know that I was proved fully innocent. Despite this, she still beamed when I asked her on a date, and has begged me, more than once, to give her another shot.

  If she can still look at me like I’m something precious, despite the fact that she doesn’t know everything, then it means things are looking up for both of us.

  With this thought in mind, I make my way up to her apartment and knock firmly on the door. There’s a clatter inside, followed by running feet, and then the door swings open.

  She’s put some makeup on, I notice immediately. I haven’t noticed, before, the lack of it, but I’m certainly noticing it’s there now. It’s subtle and pretty, and I can’t tell whether it’s the foundation or the beautiful smile on her face that is making her look peppy and young. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

  She’s always wearing jeans, I note.

  “Grant!” she says. “Come in!”

  I enter the apartment. It’s quiet, and I watch as Jessica hurries to a nearby chair and tugs a coat on.

  “Where’s Owen?” I ask.

  “I’ve already had Allison pick him up,” she explains. “Hazel is down with the flu, unfortunately, but Allison says she’s going to take Owen with her to visit Ethan, Georgia and Lily.”

  “Lily will love that,” I say dryly.

  The ten-year-old can be precocious and possessive, and I can’t see her taking well to the three-year-old who will no doubt steal everyone’s attention. She will be fine though.

  “Are you ready to go?” I ask her.

  “Yeah,” she says, grabbing her purse. “I…should have asked, but I wasn’t sure if we were taking your bike? I dressed warmly, anyway.”

  I smile slightly. “We’re taking the bike.”

  It’s like a sun is spreading over her face. I had wondered, before, if she missed riding on the bike with me. I guess this is my answer.

  “Great,” she says enthusiastically. “Let’s go!”

  Cheerfully, she grabs my wrist and tugs me out of the room, and I follow in her wake. She’s so happy and eager. Unlike me, who has been so nervous, she’s obviously been anticipating this date since Sunday.

  Then I notice the slight tremor in her hand. It’s barely there, but I’m hyper aware of her skin on mine. She’s just as nervous as I am, which is why she seems so loud and over the top right now. She’s excited but she’s also anxious about how this is going to go.

  Somehow, knowing this, I relax slightly. I’m not the only one who seems to be worried about what’s going to happen.

  “Dinner first?” I offer. “The movie doesn’t start for another two hours.”

  “Sounds good,” she says. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Nothing fancy,” I say. “How do burgers sound?”

  All at once, I wonder if I should have organized something fancier. This is our first date in three years. Are burgers and a movie not enough?

  Jessica beams at me though.

  “That sounds great,” she assures me, and I search her face to make sure she’s being genuine. “That’ll bring back memories. We used to sit at those tables inside and eat burgers all the time. You’d get that ridiculous large, heart-stopping meat thing, and I’d get something smaller.”

  “You always stole the bacon off mine,” I remind her, pleased that she seems happy with the choice.

  “I like bacon,” she laughs.

  We laugh together, caught in reminiscing in the past. Is this a good thing? I’m not sure, but we’re both happy right now, so maybe it’s okay to let it happen.

  Right, I’m actually happy. What does that tell me? I’m pleased to be in Jessica’s company. The dark, awful emotions that I’ve felt both in the last week and over the last three years are still there, but they’re kept at bay by the cheer I can’t help but feel as we leave the apartment and head to my bike.

  “I’m looking forward to this,” Jessica says longingly.

  I almost ask her if it’s the date itself that she’s looking forward to. But then I see her staring at the bike with bright eyes.

  “I almost learnt to ride,” she tells me. “But then I had Owen, and I just didn’t have the time.”

  I didn’t know she had ever contemplated learning to ride motorbikes. Just another thing I didn’t know about her.

  “I could maybe teach you one day,” I say.

  The words are out before I realize. I don’t even know if this is going to work, and I’m offering one-on-one time with her in the future? I think she realizes the foolishness of this as well, but she does smile, pleased at the suggestion.

  “Maybe,” she says.

  I clear my throat and unclip a spare helmet, handing it to her. Despite the way her hair is sitting so nicely, she puts the helmet on immediately, clipping it up under her chin. She barely has to adjust it; she’s still the last person to have ever worn that helmet.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I say to her, swinging my leg over the bike.

  She hops on behind me and scoots in closer. Her body is pressed against my back, and her arms wind unhesitatingly around my waist, gripping me tightly. I tense briefly, surprised at the contact, before forcing myself to relax. It’s okay. This is nice.

  “This is amazing,” Jessica breathes, and her breath brushes the back of my neck, making me shudder.

  Trying not to think about how close she is, I turn the bike on. It thrums beneath us and I kick it into gear, pulling out onto the road. Her arms briefly tighten before she leans back slightly.

  I can’t help but grin at her excitement. Maybe, regardless of however this relationship goes, I will teach her how to ride. It would be nice to have a student as enthusiastic as her about bikes.

  It doesn’t take us long to get to the burger place. Several people look
up as we arrive, caught by the sound of the motorbike, but they look away as we dismount and lock up the bike, uninterested. Jessica clips her helmet back into place.

  “I really did miss that,” she says, laughing. “It’s such an amazing feeling, you know.”

  “I know,” I laugh.

  After all, that was the reason why I decided to start riding in the first place. At one of my few foster families, one of my older foster brothers, who had just turned twenty-one, had a motorbike. He used to take the fifteen-year-old me out on it all the time. I was devastated when I was moved on from that family less than six months later, all because they didn’t have the funds to support me. It was one of the few emotional goodbyes I ever had, and I never saw them again.

  But I never forgot the kindness they showed me, and I was obsessed with learning to ride a motorbike from that moment on. It was families like that who kept me afloat during some of the darker times in my childhood.

  “You alright?” Jessica asks, noticing that my mind is wandering.

  “Yeah,” I say to her with a small smile. My stomach rumbles and I can’t help but laugh. “I’m starving.”

  “Same,” Jessica laughs. “Is the theater far from here?”

  “Just there, actually,” I say, pointing to a large building.

  “Great,” Jessica says, grinning. “That means we still have lots of time to eat.”

  The restaurant we’ve found isn’t amazingly large, but they have a nice selection of lots of different things to eat. I’m half tempted to get the steak, but I really do want burgers with Jessica. Maybe we’ll come back here another day?

  Jessica must have been on the same wavelength, because she orders a burger as well, and then I buy a basket of chips to put on the table between us. We take our number and head to a small two-seater table by the window.

  “Now we just need to keep an eye on the time,” Jessica says, smiling at me.

  We fall silent. This is the first hurdle, I suddenly realize. Every other time we’ve sat down to talk alone, it was either about Owen or we ended up having sex. It’s strangely different now that we’re on an actual date. I don’t know what to say.

  “Owen hasn’t let go of that bear since Sunday,” Allison suddenly says.

  “Really?” I ask, startled and pleased.

  “He really does adore you,” Jessica says with a small smile. “His daycare teacher says he was bragging all about the truck you got him last week. They pulled me aside because, as far as they knew, his father wasn’t, uh, on the scene, and I just told them that we were apart but had been working things out. It isn’t really any of their business.”

  “What about Hazel?” I ask. “You said she would be curious.”

  “She was,” Jessica says dryly. “She sent so many messages. I finally called her late Saturday night and explained. She deserves to know what’s going on. She’s really looking forward to meeting you.”

  “She sounds nice,” I say with a small smile.

  “She’s pretty great,” Jessica agrees with a laugh.

  We’ve relaxed, I realize. Talking about Owen is an ice breaker. Maybe we really can do this after all.

  I can only hope so.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jessica

  I have no idea what I did to deserve this. It feels like I’m flying on air, as though absolutely nothing can go wrong. Grant is smiling and laughing with me, and he’s talking to me. Most of our conversation has revolved around Owen, and we’ve very carefully steered our way around sensitive topics like our break-up, the research that I did to find out Grant’s secret and our feelings for each other, whatever they are. Those sorts of things can wait until we’re both more secure in a relationship, if it ever gets to that point.

  I don’t know for sure that this is going to work. But, as dinner wears on, I start to feel cautiously hopeful, especially as the conversation turns away from Owen and onto our daily lives. I talk to Grant about my job at the local grocery store; it isn’t much, and I work two full days a week so I can pay the rent and Owen’s day care fees, but I enjoy it, especially since it gets me out of the house.

  Grant, on the other hand, seems to enjoy playing with a local football team. The weather has taken a cold turn lately, so they haven’t played as much as he would like to. He dragged Kyle to a game once, thinking that he would be the perfect player, but the large man fumbled the ball so many times that eventually ended up leaving the field so that everyone else could continue playing the game. I laughed hard at the image; Kyle doesn’t strike me as the type to be really clumsy, after all, and it’s hilarious to imagine him tripping on the field and dropping the ball like his fingers are made out of butter.

  Grant grins along with me, looking pleased that he made me laugh. I remember, vaguely, from the other night, being so happy that I had made him smile and laugh after several beers. It gave me a warm, contented feeling.

  But this is so much better. Grant isn’t smiling at me because he’s drunk and his inhibitions are lowered. He’s smiling because he’s sitting across from me on a date that he asked me on, half eaten burgers between us as we tell each other things about ourselves. He wants to be here, and that makes all the difference in the world.

  It’s enough to make me want to cry. But I won’t, because that would startle Grant, and I don’t want this date to end any time soon.

  I’m learning so much about him. When he said we should try this to get to know each other a little better, he really meant it. It’s not only about the football, which is a sport I had no idea he played. He tells me that he learned to play the piano a long, long time ago, when one of his kinder foster families paid for lessons, and that he sometimes still practices on a keyboard Ethan bought for Lily, who is apparently tone-deaf and hates music.

  Then there’s the thing about computers. I had no idea that Grant loved tinkering with the inside of laptops and computers. He taught himself the components of these devices by pulling them apart and carefully putting them back together.

  “I ruined several laptops doing it,” he says with a laugh. “Luckily they were old and no one wanted them anymore. But, eventually, I figured it out. Now, if any of the club members have a computer problem, they’ll bring it to me. Most of them even pay me for it. Only Ethan doesn’t, and that’s because I refuse to take his money.”

  It’s fascinating. I wish I had known all these things about Grant three years ago. I didn’t realize just how much I didn’t know.

  And as we start talking about me, I notice that I’m the same. Grant didn’t know that I could play the flute because I was in a school band. He didn’t know that I’m an aunt to two girls, though that’s only been in recent years when my sister gave birth to identical twins. He had no idea that I can’t stand ruffles on dresses because they tickle my skin and make me itchy all night.

  Why didn’t we know these things about each other? These pieces of information aren’t huge, they aren’t secrets. After being in a relationship, we should have known almost everything there was to know about each other.

  But we didn’t. Because we were both very closed-off people. Grant didn’t know how to trust anyone after what happened to him. I didn’t know how to open up and say what was on my mind, having been bullied terribly as a child and, as a result, being scared that no one wanted to hear what I had to say. Just another thing that Grant didn’t know about.

  We really didn’t have the best relationship three years ago. It’s almost hard to believe that it lasted as long as it did. I think we were only together for two and a half years because we loved each other so much, and we both hoped that the other would eventually open up, well aware of the secrets we were keeping ourselves.

  Maybe, one day, these things would have been voiced. But, instead, our relationship was cut tragically short by my foolishness. Now, here we are three years later, acting like we’re on our very first date and taking the time to really get to know each other.

  I could sit here forever. But we hav
e a movie to go to, and I’m starting to grow tired of hearing all the things I should have known. There’s a slightly tight expression on Grant’s face, too, and his eyes are tired and sad. But neither of us are angry; we’re just beginning to realize how wrong things had gone for us.

  “Ready to go?” Grant asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, standing as he picks up the bill.

  He pays for the meal, which makes me smile and insist that I pick up the movie tickets, and then we step out into the brisk evening air. I pull my jacket closer together to keep the chill out.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask Grant.

  “A little stunned,” Grant says with a chuckle, and I relax; so far, he isn’t rethinking this. “There’s so much we didn’t know. But…I’m kind of glad we’re talking about it, you know? It hurts a little, but I think this is really important.”

  “I agree,” I say with a small smile. “No matter what happens next between us, we need to know each other like this.”

  “Exactly,” Grant says with a nod.

  Maybe, after this date is finished, Grant and I will decide to remain just friends. I have to remind myself that this is still a possibility. Talking with Grant has reminded me of just how compatible we are, but I don’t know if he wants a relationship like that with me anymore. I don’t know even know, right now, if a relationship like that will work anymore, not after everything I’m finding out about what I don’t know. I feel like I have to apologize to Grant for not asking enough questions three years ago. For once, though, I’m not alone in fault.

  However, my thoughts judder to a halt when Grant quietly reaches out and tugs my hand into his. It’s the first time he’s touched me tonight, other than when he helped me down off the bike. My breath catches and my heart stutters in my chest. His palm is large, and his fingers curl comfortingly around mine.

  It’s a warm touch, unlike the fierce, sexual touches we’ve shared up until this point. We haven’t touched each other like this in three years, I think dazedly. Even since we reunited, we’ve only touched each other to have sex.