The Lies That Bind

by Emily Giffin

  The Lies That Bind is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Emily Giffin

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Illustration by iStock/stellalevi

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Giffin, Emily, author.

  Title: The lies that bind : a novel / Emily Giffin.

  Description: New York : Ballantine Books, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020002353 (print) | LCCN 2020002354 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399178955 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780399178962 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3607.I28 L54 2020 (print) | LCC PS3607.I28 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6-dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002353

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002354

  randomhousebooks.com

  Cover design: Laura Klynstra

  Cover image: Creative Market

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Emily Giffin

  About the Author

  May 2001

  It is sometime between one and two in the morning, and I am sitting alone in a grungy, graffiti-covered dive bar in the East Village. The vibe is mellow, the crowd as eclectic as the jukebox—a blend of rock and metal, punk and hip-hop. At the moment, Dido is crooning “Thank You,” the ballad I loved, then overplayed and tired of, which now just fills me with aching lonesomeness.

  As I finish a pint of stout, I make eye contact with the bartender, a middle-aged, gray-haired man who is pleasant but not chatty. “Would you like another?” he asks with a hint of an Irish accent I didn’t notice before.

  “Yes, please,” I say, then, against my better judgment, ask if they have a pay phone.

  He tells me they do, but it’s out of service. I feel a wave of relief, until he hands me a cordless phone from behind the bar and says I’m welcome to use it if it’s not long distance. I stare down at the receiver, thinking that this is precisely why Scottie, my best friend since the first grade, told me to stay in and not drink. Batten down the hatches, he had coached me from our hometown of Pewaukee, Wisconsin, explaining that I wasn’t ready to be tested by a buzz.

  I initially followed his advice, hunkering down on my secondhand slipcovered sofa to eat Thai takeout and watch the shows I’d been videotaping all week: Will & Grace and The West Wing, Frasier and Friends, Survivor and The Sopranos. Television, I’d discovered in the week since Matthew and I had broken up, had the numbing effect of alcohol without the obvious pitfalls, and it eventually lulled me to sleep, one step closer to the elusive promise of time healing all.

  But sometime around midnight, after transferring from my sofa to my bed across my four-hundred-square-foot studio apartment, I snapped wide awake to a disjointed but decidedly R-rated dream featuring Matthew and Jennifer Aniston—or to be more precise, Rachel Green, who also happened to be cheating on Ross. Staring up at a water stain on my plaster ceiling, I told myself that it actually wouldn’t be cheating in our case—we were broken up, not “on a break”—but I still felt irrationally pissed, imagining Matthew with someone new, moving on before I could. Of course, the opposite could also be true. He could be staring up at his ceiling, missing me, too. Maybe he’d even caved and called me.

  I reached for my cellphone on the nightstand, flipping it open, checking for a voicemail or even a missed call. Nothing. I got up, stumbled over to my desk, and stared into that damn red eye on my answering machine, taunting me with the reminder that I had No. New. Messages. The last step was to turn on my computer and check my AOL email and Instant Messenger—the portal where Matthew and I once communicated throughout our workday. Still nothing. That’s when the panic set in. Panic that I’d never be able to fall back asleep; panic that even if I did fall asleep, all that awaited me was a lonely Sunday morning; and most of all, panic that I would look back at this fork in the road as the biggest mistake of my life. That Matthew would become my One Who Got Away. The one I pushed away simply because I had no guarantee of a future with him.

  Like an alcoholic holding a bottle of vodka, I ran my fingers over the keyboard, craving the familiar, asking myself what it would really hurt to say hello. I told myself not to do it. Not only because of pride, but because I didn’t want to go backward. The first week was surely the hardest. It had to get easier. I had to be strong. And that’s when I made the split-second decision to leave my apartment, get some fresh air, move away from my electronic instruments of self-destruction.

  Within seconds, I was brushing my teeth, running a comb through my hair, and stripping off my T-shirt and ancient plaid flannel pajama pants. I rifled through my open hamper, pulling on a baby-doll dress and a black cardigan. Both pieces were wrinkled and smelled faintly of the greasy diner on Lexington Avenue where I’d eaten earlier that day, but I put them on anyway, figuring there was no point in wearing anything nice—or even clean—for a late-night stroll. Strategically leaving my cellphone behind, I grabbed my purse, threw on my Steve Madden platform slides, then headed out the door, locking up with keys attached to my University of Wisconsin nylon Velcro wallet, a vestige from grad school that Matthew once told me was “cute” and “so you”—which I now saw as a backhanded compliment. A you’re-not-quite-good-enough-to-marry kind of comment.

  I walked down the narrow gray corridor, past neighbors I would never know, bypassing the claustrophobic elevator that I took only when carrying groceries—and almost never without imagining being trapped inside and slowly suffocating. The thwaps of my footsteps echoed as I descend
ed four flights of the concrete stairwell to a doorman-less lobby so hideous that it should have been a deal breaker when I was apartment hunting. Three of the walls were covered in a trippy orange wallpaper; the fourth was smoke-mirrored—and not in a cool deco way, but in a depressing, dated way. I caught a glimpse of myself, the word frumpy coming to mind, a tough feat at age twenty-eight. But I looked on the bright side: My current appearance would serve as an insurance policy against “running into” Matthew—say, at the doorstep of his apartment.

  Then I was outside, in the no-man’s-land between Gramercy and the East Village. As I inhaled the warm night air, I felt the slightest bit better, almost hopeful. After all, this was New York, the city that never sleeps. The possibilities were endless, and summer was coming. It was the feeling I’d had when I moved to the city four years ago—before I’d become jaded. How was it possible to be jaded in your twenties?

  I headed east, in the opposite direction from Matthew’s Upper West Side apartment, but with no destination in mind. I considered stopping by the bodega on Second Avenue, which has the best selection of candy and magazines, but kept going, past Stuyvesant Square, then onto Fourteenth Street. Along some of the sketchier blocks, I contemplated digging into my purse for my pepper spray, but there were too many people out and about for me to really worry. It was a concept my parents didn’t grasp, their view of New York rooted in the seventies, back when the city apparently turned into a gauntlet of criminals after nightfall.

  When I reached Avenue B, I couldn’t help but think of Rent, the musical that takes place in Alphabet City. It is an impossible ticket to come by—and ridiculously expensive—but Matthew had made it happen for my birthday. I felt a sharp pang of nostalgia and the beginning of a downward spiral, but I told myself to stay the course, literally and figuratively, just as I spotted a bar on the corner of Seventh and B, with Tudor-paned windows and a red castle-arched doorway. It looked promising—soothing even—and I ducked inside, taking a seat at the horseshoe-shaped bar.

  And that’s how I got to this moment, staring at a cordless phone, nursing my second pint, listening to Dido go on and on about the best day of her life. My willpower crumbling, I pick up the receiver and begin to dial Matthew’s number. I get through all the digits except the last before I hear a deep voice behind me saying, Don’t do it.

  Startled, I look over my shoulder and see a guy about my age, maybe a little older, staring down at me. He is tall—basketball player tall—with a five o’clock shadow and strong, dark features.

  “What’d you say?” I ask, thinking I must have heard him wrong.

  “I said, ‘Don’t do it.’ Don’t call him.” He is stone-faced, but something in his brown eyes looks amused.

  Too dumbfounded to issue an outright denial, I say, “What makes you think I was calling a him?”

  He shrugs, takes the stool next to mine, and says, “Well? Am I right?”

  I shrug, fight a smile, and tell him yeah, he’s right.

  “Who is he?”

  “My ex.”

  “Well. He’s your ex for a reason. Onward.”

  I stare at him, speechless, thinking that it’s almost as if he’s a secret agent hired by Scottie to spy on me. Or maybe he’s my personal guardian angel, like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life.

  Meanwhile, the bartender returns, and my new stool mate orders a Jack and Coke while gazing up at the wall of liquor partitioning the bar. “And…let’s see…two shots of Goldschläger.”

  “Goldschläger?” I say with a laugh. “Didn’t see that coming.”

  “I’m full of surprises,” he says. “And you look like you need it.”

  I shake my head and tell him I don’t do shots.

  “That’s a lie right there,” he says, smiling at me.

  He’s right, of course—so I smile back at him as the bartender retrieves the long-necked bottle, unscrews the top, and fills two shot glasses to the brim, placing them before us, then walking away again. We pluck them off the bar in tandem, raising them to eye level.

  “To moving on,” he says.

  “To moving on,” I repeat under my breath.

  We make eye contact before throwing them back. It takes me two swallows to finish mine, my throat burning. But I remain stoic, skipping the standard chaser and grimace.

  “Feel better?” he asks.

  I say yes, marveling that I actually do. “How about you?” I ask, prying a little.

  “Yes,” he says. “I do, too.”

  It’s an easy, natural opening to ask for his story—who he loves or no longer loves—or at least the usual barroom questions you pose to strangers. What’s your name? Where’re you from? Where’d you go to school? What do you do for a living? But I don’t go there. I don’t go anywhere. Instead, I just enjoy our quiet camaraderie, the feeling of not being alone, the miraculous absence of misery. He must feel something of the same, because over the next hour and a half and several drinks, we talk remarkably little, yet neither of us makes a move to leave.

  And then it’s last call. I suggest a parting shot of Goldschläger, and he agrees that it’s a good idea. This time we skip a toast, but I silently replay our first one. To moving on. That is definitely what I am trying to do.

  When our check arrives, he pulls his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans while I reach for my purse. He shakes his head, and says, no, he’ll get it. I start to protest, but say thank you instead.

  “You’re welcome,” he says. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” I ask.

  “You know,” he says, removing several bills from his wallet and putting them on the bar.

  I nod, because I think I do.

  He catches me staring at him and looks self-conscious for the first time all night. “What?” he says, running his hand through his hair.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “You were definitely thinking something…” he says, returning his wallet to his back pocket before pushing up the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

  “I was thinking that I still don’t know your name,” I say.

  “Is that your way of asking my name?” he says with a smile, now resting his forearms on the bar.

  I try not to smile back, and shake my head. “Not at all,” I say. “I was just stating a fact. I actually don’t want to know your name.”

  “Good,” he says. “Because I don’t want to know your name, either.”

  “Swell,” I say, sliding off my stool, noticing my cardigan on the floor. I pick it up, put it on, then slowly button it, stalling. Now it’s my turn to feel self-conscious, but I mask it by extending my arm and making my expression prim. “So thank you again,” I say. “For the drinks and the company. Goodbye. Whatever your name is.”

  “Yep. Goodbye,” he says, shaking my hand, his grip tight and warm. “Whatever your name is.”

  I start to let go, but he holds on, pulling me toward him until my side is touching his knee, my hand still in his. I feel something funny in my stomach—something I haven’t felt in a very long time. For a second, I think it’s butterflies. I think it’s him.

  But as the overhead lights brighten over the bar, and the jukebox grinds to a halt, and he drops my hand, I decide that such a thing isn’t possible. That it must just be the Goldschläger.

  * * *

  —

  A few minutes later, after we’ve both gone to the restroom, and I’ve confirmed that I look like shit but remind myself that it doesn’t matter in the slightest, we are standing outside the bar. The temperature has dropped, but the air is so still that I don’t feel cold. The liquor helps, too. He announces that he’s going to the subway, and asks how I’m getting home. I tell him I’m taking a cab, and he says he’ll stay with me until we find one. Meanwhile, we start walking up the avenue, one block passing after another, both of us pretending not to see on-duty taxis dr
ift by. Eventually we reach the steps of my building.

  “This is it. Where I live,” I say, turning to face him. He’s much taller than I am, so I climb a stair, then another, looking into his eyes.

  “All right, then,” he says, leaning against the railing. “Good night for real this time.”

  “Yep. Good night for real,” I say.

  But neither of us moves, and after a long pause, he says, “Maybe I do want to know your name, after all?”

  “Are you sure?” I say with my best poker face. “That’s a pretty major step.”

  “You’re right,” he says, playing along. “Way too forward. My bad.”

  Several seconds pass before I fold first.

  “Sooo…Maybe you should just come in with me instead?” I am shocked to hear myself say. It’s not like me to be so spontaneous, downright foolish. He could be a serial killer for all I know. Didn’t they say Ted Bundy was good-looking? But for some inexplicable reason, it feels right.

  He hesitates, and for a second I think he’s about to decline my offer—which is probably for the best. Instead he says, “Are you inviting me in?”

  “Yes,” I say, trusting myself—and him. “I am.”

  “I accept,” he says with a formal little nod.

  I nod back, then turn and lead him up the stairs, through my front door and lobby, and over to the elevator, figuring I would be okay getting stuck inside with him. As we ride the elevator, we don’t speak. Our silence continues as I unlock my door and we enter my dark apartment, passing by the unblinking red eye of my answering machine. I know I should lead him over to my sofa, offer him a drink, make conversation. But I’m suddenly exhausted, and all I want to do is get into my bed. With him. So I walk there instead, taking off my shoes and cardigan before peeling back the covers. I don’t look at him, but can feel him watching me.