Fake It

by Mia Ford

  “I understand,” I reply quietly, preparing myself to reveal something that I haven’t yet full accepted myself. “I understand completely, but nothing aside from the emails happened while she was here. We were just friends, I just wanted to help her, that’s all…”

  “So, you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t have any feelings at all?”

  I don’t see the point in answering that, we both know the truth. “I love her,” I tell Alexandra with all the brutal honesty I can manage. “I wouldn’t have done anything if I didn’t love her. This is real, we love each other. This isn’t just something. It’s going to last. Forever.”

  Alexandra looks at me and she shakes her head in dismay. “It doesn’t matter, Logan, this goes above and beyond that. You have to leave this job now. I cannot keep you here.”

  “But it won’t happen again, I’m not a danger to anyone. You won’t have to worry.”

  “Stop.” Alexandra holds up her hands to prevent me from speaking any more. “I can’t listen to this, Logan, I just can’t. The decision has already been made. I don’t know if there’s going to be more to this. There might even have to be legal action, if that’s what Pru wants. Don’t make this worse. Just go now in a dignified manner and make this easier on everyone.”

  I give her one last lingering look before I push myself into a standing position. I suppose she’s right, this could turn into something much uglier if I let it. Much as I don’t want to I need to get out now while I still can. I need to get some space, to figure out what my next move needs to be. There has to be some way I can fight this, to make it right again. I need to get this all back somehow.

  As I walk towards the exit of the building, I see Hank standing in the corner. Immediately he averts his eyes away from me. Guilt, and probably disgust too, makes it impossible for him to look at me. He could have been my friend too, he certainly wanted to be, and I fucked it up. If only I had gone out with him, then there would be a big chance that none of this would have happened.

  But I suppose it would’ve come out eventually. Things like this don’t stay hidden forever. If me and Pru have to be together then it would come to this in the end. Now I just need to work out how exactly I’m going to piece all of this back together. It isn’t going to be easy, that’s for sure…

  ***

  Hours and hours of driving haven’t helped me, not one bit. I don’t want to leave my car, not until I’ve calmed down quite a bit, but it’s getting dark now and I can’t avoid the inevitable forever. Sooner or later I’m going to have to communicate with Pru about this, and I suppose I might as well get it over and done with. Like ripping a band aid off… to reveal a large, disgusting gaping wound underneath. One that keeps spilling out blood and puss and there’s no way to stop it.

  Urgh, just be a man, I warn myself as I turn the car off. Face it like I should have done before.

  I walk towards my apartment slowly and purposefully, wishing idly for a natural disaster to come along to destroy the world so I don’t have to face this. But Of course nothing happens. The only world being destroyed today is my own. Figures, what else should I expect?

  “Hello?” Pru calls out excitedly as soon as she hears me click the door open. “Logan, is that you? Thank goodness you’re home I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day…”

  “Pru.” I stop her because I can’t stand to hear her so positive when everything is about to come crashing down around us. “Don’t… just don’t. We need to talk about things, it’s important.”

  “What’s going on?” She freezes and her expression completely changes. “Are you okay?”

  “I… I lost my job,” I tell her with a shrug. “They found out about us because Hank saw us together last night, kissing, and now I’m unemployed and they might even get the cops on us…”

  “What?” she exclaims while jumping up. “What the hell are you talking about? How can they fire you? And what’s this about the cops? They can’t blame us for falling in love. I mean, I love you. That isn’t a crime, is it? And nothing happened while I was at the center so why does it…”

  I’m aware that she just declared her love for me for the first time but I can’t focus on that part right now. Nor can I concentrate on my own feelings. I need to be smart for the first time.

  “We emailed each other, which isn’t allowed, while you were still at the center, and it is still wrong. We shouldn’t be doing this, we never should have done this. It’s always been wrong.”

  I tug on the ends of my hair, wishing that I’d taken even more time before I decided to face this. I don’t even know what I’m doing here, I don’t even know what my plan is. I just know that something has to change and fast. I cannot carry on as I am, and nor can Pru.

  “What… what are you saying?” she asks me worriedly. She pushes herself up off the couch and moves across the room. The nearer that she gets to me, the more I can feel my emotions stirring and churning. I become even more confused than before. “What are you trying to tell me, Logan?”

  I stare intently at her, wanting her to just get it already. But she doesn’t. In her naïve desperation to make this work she just bites down on her bottom lip and she waits for me to make the choice.

  “Pru, you have to go,” I gush out sadly. “I can’t have you here anymore, this isn’t right.”

  “You’re breaking up with me?” She demands answers that I cannot give. “Is this it? Are you done with me? This can’t really… we can’t… we can still… this doesn’t have to break us up?”

  “It does.” Tears stream down her cheeks and I can feel them spilling down mine too. “It does mean that. How the hell can we keep on doing this when the world doesn’t want us to?”

  Pru reaches forward and she grabs my hand. Her skin touching mine brings out all the electricity, but I can’t keep caving to that right now. I need to behave like I should have done all along.

  “It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks,” she tells me sincerely. “It only matters what we think, doesn’t it? We love each other, we know that, we know what it means…”

  I know that I could easily get sucked into this again if I wanted to, I could allow Pru to rail road me into doing what I want to do rather than what’s right, but there’s too much at stake now, too much to worry about. I’ve already lost my job, I don’t have a chance of getting it back with her here.

  “Pru, you have settled into your new job now, I’ve helped you out as much as I can, I’ve let you stay here for as long as we agreed. It’s time for you to go home. You need to get on with your real life now and so do I. This has been a fantasy, a momentary lapse, but now it’s time to stop.”

  Pru doesn’t answer me, I don’t know if she’s accepting it at all. She just looks completely bewildered by everything. I suppose that makes sense, one moment everything was great, everything was on the up, and now it’s all fallen apart.

  “We knew that this day would come,” I say morosely. “We knew that this couldn’t last, didn’t we? We went into this with our eyes wide open.”

  But Of course we didn’t. Neither of us were even thinking about the future, just living in the moment, enjoying how it. This is a shock to both of us, I don’t know how either of us will cope now. It’s going to be a very messy life from here on out.

  Chapter Twenty Six – Prudence

  This apartment doesn’t scare me anymore, it doesn’t have the same grip on my fear gland that it once did, despite the fact that it’s late at night, there are shadows dancing everywhere, and next door are yelling at one another like crazy. Over the last two and half weeks I’ve become very used to it. The noises are just noises, they aren’t coming for me or anything. I don’t like it, but I’m used to it.

  No, it doesn’t scare me, but it does make me feel incredibly sad. It makes me feel lonely.

  ‘You coming out tonight?’ Alice texts me, just like she does most nights. She continues to reach out to me despite the fact that I hardly ever go. Maybe t
his should be the time where I’m out living life, recovering from my heart ache by dancing with men I haven’t met before, but I don’t want to. They love drinking and I really don’t. While I can enjoy myself without it, it always makes me feel a little bit left out. I’m on the outside, looking in, missing out just a little bit. I’m still a freak.

  Alice, Becky, and the others are great, but they’re a bit too much for me. I’m too naïve for them.

  ‘Not tonight,’ I reply quickly. ‘Got plans with the boyfriend. Next time though!’

  I never told her about things falling apart with me and Logan because I couldn’t stand to talk about it without sobbing for a while, and now I’m glad. It makes for a perfect excuse these days, the girls think I’m blowing them off for hot sex which apparently is very acceptable to do. It makes me feel better than telling them that I’m crying by myself anyway, trying to recover from a broken heart.

  I wish that was the truth. I wish I could be with Logan, hugging, kissing, making love. I wish I could be in that safe place in his arms, with his warm love surrounding me, knowing that he completely belongs to me. I didn’t take that feeling for granted when I had it, but I didn’t savor it as much as I should have done because I didn’t think I’d have to let it go. I thought I would have it forever. Sometimes, I imagine that the fantasy life I share with the girls is true, and I pretend that I’m not a lonely fool who’s pushed everyone good away. It’s better than this, anyway.

  Maybe I should have expected things to disintegrate in the way that they did, maybe it was wrong of me to think that we could actually be together forever, but I was… am deeply in love. I assumed that Logan was on the same page as me, but apparently, he could see the bigger picture. While I was tumbling into the abyss of emotion, he was already extracting himself, ready to move on. I don’t know how I didn’t see the signs, things felt perfect to me. Maybe him being so nice to me was all a part of his escape, and I’m so naïve that I didn’t know that unwritten code. Just further proof that I’m a child that tried too hard to step into adult shoes that I wasn’t ready for.

  I step into the lukewarm shower that I have every day to wash the horror of working in this store every single day off of me. My first instincts, the ones that I had on my first day, were right. I might have gotten the hang of it now, but I hate it. I don’t like always feeling left behind with the girls, I hate Mr. Turner and his bullshit attitude that’s come to life more and more that time has passed, and I don’t like the way that the customers treat me. I’m in the wrong job, but I don’t know where else to go. I don’t know what else I could do, I feel very lost.

  As the water runs over me, I let the tears run free. At least in here I can cry without feeling too messy and pathetic because no one can see me. I wish I could go back in time and do all of this again. Maybe if I hadn’t rung Logan on that first night, maybe if I kept away from him, then I could’ve done this right. He wouldn’t have lost his job because of me, I wouldn’t be in this mess, I would have simply gotten over my crush and life would be smooth. I would be okay.

  “Damn it,” I mutter to myself while wiping the water from my face, pointlessly of course because the shower is still on, rushing over me. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

  I punch the shower wall, hating everything about myself. Things should be better out here than at the center, but they aren’t. I miss everything about being there, even Leah and her big mouth. That noise was better than the yelling followed by rampant sex I’m forced to hear all the time. And now, because of what’s happened, I can’t even go back for a visit. I can’t even see them because of Logan.

  Eventually, once I feel clean, I step out of the shower and I grab myself a towel. As I do every night I grab my cell phone and I stare at the screen, there’s only one message on there and it’s gone unreplied to for far too long: ‘Hi Logan, it’s Pru, Thank you so much for all the lovely things that you’ve done for me today. I appreciate it. X’ I keep wanting to send him another but I can’t see the point. Logan made it very clear that we’re done and I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that. He kicked me out, he severed all ties, and he’s given me no clue that things are about to change.

  I’m on my own. No doubt about it. All by myself in this big stupid world.

  Knock, knock. I glance towards the door in shock. Knock, knock.

  I don’t know who that could be, no one knows where I live aside from Logan, not even Alice. There isn’t anyone this can be. It won’t be him, I’m sure of it. It can’t be.

  “Hello?” I call out anxiously. No way I can answer the door without knowing exactly who’s on the other side of it. Especially not while I’m undressed. “Who’s there?”

  I grab a pair of sweat pants and throw them on my body, then I scurry around for a top.

  “Ma’am, it’s the police.” My heart stops absolutely dead in my chest. “We have been trying to get in touch with you for some time. Can we come in and have a chat, please?”

  The police? Since I haven’t been in trouble about anything, there’s only one thing this can be about and it’s the last thing I want to deal with. I cannot believe the center pushed it this far, especially when it’s long done which I assume they must know since he must have gone back to get his job. What the hell is the point of this aside from torturing and punishing me?

  “Erm, hang on a moment.” I really need to be dressed for this. “I’ll be right there.”

  “Okay, Ma’am, we’ll wait for as long as it takes.”

  Fuck, how the hell am I going to do this? What’s this going to be like? I scrabble around and grab things while my brain spins. Am I going to be in real trouble too? I guess I don’t really know anything. All I know is that I fell in love and that’s all that matters. But will they see it that way? I’m going to have to try. I’m going to defend my love until the bitter end no matter what it takes?

  I stare at my wrists quickly, imaging handcuffs around them. My God, what if I end up in jail? What if I get locked up in an institution again? Only a much worse one than before. It doesn’t bear thinking about. I can’t stand the idea of it, it absolutely terrifies me.

  I stare at the door for a moment, pausing, wondering if I’m letting in hell by opening it, but really, I know that I have to. I don’t have any choice but to face the consequences for what I’ve done. Logan has had to face it and now it’s my turn.

  Do this, I warn myself desperately. Face this, do it for him.

  ***

  I collapse into bed hours later, feeling all the emotional energy drain from my body completely. That was the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to but it’s over now. I managed to prove without a doubt that nothing happened while I was at the center and that the emails were merely a young girl reaching out to a friend that she could trust. I was honest too, mostly, I don’t think I fully explained how I felt about him then, but that’s my fault not his. He doesn’t deserve to be punished.

  I didn’t say much about what happened after we left the center because they didn’t ask me. That’s my business anyway, I was officially an adult by then. It was up to me what I do.

  It’s not going to go any further, thankfully that was something that I had to make a decision on which means I got to end it. Logan might not ever know what I’ve done but that hardly matters. I didn’t do it for recognition, I did it because it’s the right thing to do. For both of us.

  Of course there’s a part of me that wants to tell him, but that’s because I want to tell him everything I want to talk to him about all that happens in my life. But I can’t. It’s better if I try to get some sleep instead. I’m slowly recovering from my addiction to Logan, and I don’t want to go back.

  With a deep sigh, I click the cell phone off so I don’t even have the small temptation any more. Maybe it’s time for me to get a new one. Logan gave me this, it’s a constant reminder of him. Plus, if I have a new number I won’t be able to wonder all the time if he’s going to message me, because it’ll be impossib
le for him to do so. A clean break, that’s the way it needs to be. I have to accept that it’s time to give him up forever. It isn’t going to ever be how I want it to be.

  I will have tonight to mourn for one last time, but then I have to get over this. I need to make plans to actually move on. Maybe I should move house, leave the city, start afresh. Get a job I like, make friends that are closer to my age and that I have more in common with, girls I actually feel like I can be honest with, and maybe fall in love again… only this time with someone much more appropriate. Someone who can properly love me back and that the world won’t be against.

  As I close my eyes, I dream about that life. I imagine myself shaking off the shackles of the mess that I’ve made here, starting again in a brighter, happier life. I picture myself leaving all of this behind and forgetting about it. I don’t want to be the girl who runs away all the time, but maybe that’s what I need to be for the time being. Just until I finally get it right.

  That has to come eventually, right? There has to be a time when I get it right, when my life finally starts making sense. I can’t keep on making mistake after mistake forever. Surely?

  Chapter Twenty Seven – Logan

  I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, I really don’t. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t managed to get my job back but I actually ended up pushing so hard that Alexandra said she was alerting the cops to what had happened. I haven’t heard anything about it since, but I keep waiting for the day when they knock down my door to lock me up, Pru must want revenge on me by now.