Love & Lies

by Julie Johnson

  He advanced on me and I felt my shoulders hunch involuntarily. Curling in on myself was my only defense — there were no words I could offer him to ease the pain of this loss, of this betrayal. Keeping him from Jamie, though I’d certainly had my reasons, was both the worst and the hardest thing I’d ever done. The regret of it still kept me up at night, an unwanted bedfellow that haunted my thoughts and stalked my memories.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. There was nothing else I could say.

  “You’re sorry.” Sebastian leaned into my space, fury radiating from him like a physical forcefield. “That’s just perfect. That makes it all okay.”

  My tears dripped faster, spurred by his stinging words and the sharp pain I felt inside. I’d struck a deal, and this was the price, I reminded myself. Choices had consequences. I thought I’d mastered that lesson seven years ago, but it seemed I still had some learning to do.

  “You nearly had me fooled a second time.” Sebastian’s voice dripped with disbelief and his eyes flashed with outrage and pain. “I can’t believe you almost drew me in again. Your talents are wasted here — your true calling is clearly as an actress, since you’ve mastered the art of deception.”

  I averted my eyes as his words landed against me like lashes, each one slicing deeper into vulnerable flesh.

  “Tell me, is there anything but ice beneath that pretty exterior?” he whispered, his face inches from mine.

  My gaze lifted to stare at his face, my spine straightened, my shoulders un-hunched and, for the first time, I felt it flutter to life, deep down at the depths of my soul — my own anger at this situation, finally coming alive. I was being treated as the villain here when, in actuality, I was as much a victim as he was. We’d been screwed, the both of us, by the same situation seven years ago. And yes, I’d played a role in the terrible end we’d come to that fateful June. But I couldn’t undo what had been done to our love, anymore than I could bring my brother back to life or travel through time to make my parents quit drinking so my teenage home wouldn’t be seized by the banks and debt collectors.

  When I’d worked at Minnie’s as a teen, many nights found me in the back kitchens with Minnie herself, stirring soups or helping her wash and cut vegetables for big recipes. I remember one night, when the diner had been particularly slow, we’d set ourselves up at the stainless steel prep table and peeled about fifty potatoes for a huge shepherd’s pie someone had ordered for some kind of family event — a wedding reception or maybe a reunion. Minnie, wielding a razor sharp knife, had stopped peeling in the middle of a potato and held it up for me to examine.

  “See that?” she’d asked, gesturing to the dark brown rotten spot on the side of the potato. “Some people’d throw this one out, thinkin’ it’d spoil the whole pie. But potatoes are hearty — you cut out the rot, the rest is just fine.” With a practiced swirl of her knife-tip, Minnie expertly removed the brown portion. I watched as it dropped to the tabletop, landing in a pile of discarded skins.

  “Some people, baby girl, they’re your brown spots. And some of us got more spots than others, a’course. But, point is, they don’t spoil you forever. You cut ‘em out of your life, you gonna be just fine.”

  She’d winked at me and gone right back to peeling.

  I liked to think that Minnie had been right that night — that if someone or something awful entered your life, you could cut it out cleanly and move on, as though that spot had never been there at all.

  But what if you didn’t have just one — what if you were full of brown spots?

  How many people could you walk away from? And how much of yourself could you cut away before there was nothing left behind?

  No matter how much you wish it, you can’t rewrite the past. It’s set in stone — unshakeable and uncompromising. So it made no difference whether Sebastian blamed me or badgered me about our history — I couldn’t make things better for him. The only thing I could do was vanish, cut myself out of his life completely once more, and hope that someday he might forget me all over again.

  “Say the word and I’ll go,” I whispered in a broken voice, my watering eyes locked on his furious ones. “Say the word and I’ll fade away, and this, right here, will be the last time you see me.”

  His eyes lost a little of their fury, but his jaw remained tightly clenched. I tried to gauge his emotions, but his expression was guarded. My throat constricted, and I thought I might choke on all the words I wanted to say but couldn’t ever voice.

  “You brought me here; you can send me away.” I forced myself to go on. “Let me go back to Luster. Back into your past. You and I both know it’s where I belong — and where I’m supposed to stay.”

  He stared at me for a minute in silence and for just a moment, I caught a glimpse of the boy I’d loved beneath the surface — he was there in the flash of sadness in Sebastian’s eyes, in the tense fists his fingers curled into when those words left my lips.

  I hiccupped for air, the choked sobs rattling my chest and finally breaking free. Tears blurred my vision, appearing faster than I could wipe them away.

  “I’m sorry, Bash. You have no idea how sorry I am.” I looked up at him with wet eyes, wishing I could tell him all of it — every secret, every false truth — but knowing I couldn’t.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but I took an abrupt step backward and cut off his words with my own.

  “Let me go,” I pleaded, feeling an unpleasant sensation of déjà vu as I told the man I loved, the man I’d always loved, to watch me walk away.

  I turned and darted for the elevator which, for once, opened almost immediately. I boarded and pushed the button that would carry me down to the lobby, my shoulders heaving with sobs as I wept. I didn’t — couldn’t — look back at Sebastian before the doors closed.

  “Goodbye,” I whispered into the empty elevator, pressing my eyes tightly closed against the tears.

  Regret was an emotional cancer, destroying you from the inside out. Eating at your most vital parts until there was nothing left but scar tissue and sorrow. It chipped away at you in small increments, shattering your defenses and tiring you out. But, unlike a physical cancer, which might eventually go into remission or be cut out with a few careful strokes of a surgeon’s scalpel, regret would stay with you forever. It was chronic, but not terminal — a constant companion that would haunt you until your deathbed. And there were no cures to diminish its influence. No salves to counteract its effects.

  Regret didn’t break your body. It crushed your spirit.

  Mine had just been broken beyond repair.

  Chapter 25

  Now

  * * *

  I don’t remember much of my walk home, but I know it wasn’t pretty. More than a few people stopped to stare at the girl with mascara running down her face, mussed up hair, and a trembling lower lip, but no one spoke to her. New Yorkers were rarely phased by something so minor as a girl having a total breakdown while wandering the streets of Midtown. Times like this made me miss Georgia, where I’d have been stopped immediately and tucked under the wing of a concerned neighbor, who’d have insisted on bringing me home with her for a glass of sweet tea and a slice of homemade pie.

  I supposed a bottle of Merlot would have to do as a substitute.

  When I got home, I didn’t even take my dress off before collapsing onto my bed in a heap of misery. Though the tears had finally stopped, I was exhausted from my crying jag and had no desire to look in my mirror at the puffy-eyed mess I’d become. I slipped my sleep-mask over my eyes to block out the light, burrowed my head beneath a mound of pillows to muffle the sounds of rush hour traffic, and fell into a fitful sleep, in which I dreamed of cemeteries and flashing hazel eyes.

  * * *

  “Do you think she’s dead?”

  “I don’t know, poke her foot.”

  “You poke her foot. I hate dead people.”

  “Does anyone like dead people?”

  “Necrophiliacs?”

  The sound
of two people giggling like hyenas pulled me back into consciousness.

  “Ungh,” I muttered. I really needed to change my locks.

  “Oh good, she’s alive.” A voice I now recognized as Simon’s drifted closer, and the weight of someone’s body landed next to me on the bed. Seconds later, another body settled in on my opposite side. To my dismay, my cocoon of pillows and blankets was ripped from my body and shoved to the floor. With a resigned sigh, I pushed the sleep mask up onto my forehead and cracked my eyes open. Simon and Fae were staring at me with horrified expressions.

  “What?” I asked, my voice scratchy with sleep.

  Simon looked at Fae. “Do you want to tell her, or should I?”

  “Sweetie, you look like death warmed over. You’ve got raccoon eyes.” Fae’s lips twitched as she pointed at my face. “What happened?”

  “And what’s with the psycho serial-killer wall over there?” Simon asked, gesturing toward the mosaic of notes and photos I’d pinned up on the other side of the room. “Does someone need a Prozac?”

  I groaned, pulling my sleep mask back over my eyes to block them out.

  “I think this calls for serious measures,” Fae noted.

  “Yep.” Simon agreed. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Wine,” they chimed in unison.

  A hand grazed my temple, peeling the sleep mask off my face and up over my head, and bringing my best friends back into view. Fae, sleep mask in hand, was staring at me with concern while Simon headed across the room toward the kitchen area, no doubt in search of the jumbo bottle of Merlot I’d stashed on the counter. I sat up in bed when he returned with a full glass of wine and a warm, wet washcloth. I accepted both gratefully, gently wiping at the mascara on my face and taking a large sip from my glass.

  When I’d gotten myself together, I took a deep breath and faced Simon and Fae, who were watching me from their perches at the end of my bed.

  “It’s time to spill, baby,” Simon said, squeezing my thigh. Fae nodded in agreement.

  With a sigh, I set my wine glass on the bedside table, climbed from the bed, and crossed to my desk, where I’d dropped my keys earlier. Fingering the smallest brass key on the ring, I headed for the small excuse for a closet embedded in the wall by my bed. On the top shelf, tucked behind the Jamie Box, I had a small lockbox where I kept a few things safe — the tiny diamond stud earrings my grandmother had left me when she passed, some of Jamie’s old medical records, my college diploma, and, of course, the document that had sealed my fate all those years ago.

  The NDA.

  I pulled the lockbox down from its place on the shelf and used the small key to open it. My fingers flipped through several documents before reaching the file that lay on the very bottom. I grasped the papers lightly, as though they were laced with toxins and holding them might allow fatal poison to seep through my fingertips and into my bloodstream. The pad of my index finger traced the lettering typed in boldface across the top of the first sheet:

  Non-Disclosure Agreement

  The tempo of my heart picked up speed as I walked back toward Simon and Fae, who hadn’t moved from their spots on my bed. I stopped about five feet away.

  “If I tell you everything, I’m violating this contract,” I told them, gesturing to the papers in my hand. “And, technically, I’m breaking the law.”

  “What is it?” Simon breathed, the light in his eyes equal parts excitement and trepidation.

  “It’s a non-disclosure agreement.” I swallowed roughly.

  Fae’s expression was unreadable. “It has to do with Sebastian?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I’ve never told anyone about this. Not even Jamie. I didn’t ever want to look at it again,” I whispered, my grip tightening on the slim stack of paper. I wanted to rip it to shreds, but instead I forced my grip to loosen and looked up at my friends. “But I needed you to know that this isn’t a secret I keep lightly. It’s not something I ever wanted in my life, and I probably shouldn’t even be talking about it, but I trust you guys. I love you. And if you need to know, I’ll show you — I’ll tell you everything.”

  They were quiet for a long time, the silence stretching out as I waited for them to make a decision. They locked eyes, staring at one another for a few seconds before nodding in sync and turning back to face me.

  “We don’t need to see it.” Fae smiled softly at me. Simon nodded in agreement.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, wavering. There was a large part of me that didn’t want to keep all of this to myself anymore, even though sharing wouldn’t have been the soundest decision I’d ever made.

  “Put it away, baby,” Simon ordered in a gentle voice.

  “I don’t want this secret to come between us or cause a problem in our friendship,” I said quietly, voicing one of my biggest fears. Since Jamie died, Simon and Fae were the closest thing I had to family.

  Simon snorted outright. Fae’s laugh was a little more subdued, but not much.

  “Now you’re just being a dumb blonde,” Simon chided, rolling his eyes. “I thought you’d finally dispelled that stereotype but I see my work with you is not yet done.”

  “Lux, don’t you understand?” Fae asked with a grin. “We love you too. Being friends with someone doesn’t mean that everything is perfect all the time.”

  “Clearly,” Simon chimed in, rolling his eyes.

  “As I was saying,” Fae continued, smacking Simon lightly on the arm. “A perfect friendship doesn’t mean everything is perfect — it means you love each other enough to forgive the imperfections.”

  I’d thought I was cried-out for the day, but I suddenly found my eyes watering.

  “Jesus, all this sweet bonding is giving me cavities,” Simon complained. “Put that damn thing away and come drink your wine.”

  With a laugh, I walked to the lockbox and slipped the NDA inside before placing it back on its shelf in my closet. When I returned to the bed, I sat in the space between Fae and Simon, who immediately enveloped me with their arms.

  “What would I do without you guys?” I asked, leaning my head on Simon’s shoulder.

  “You’d probably be dead in a ditch somewhere.” Fae giggled.

  “Or, at the very least, you’d have an abominable fashion sense and never get into the good nightclubs,” Simon added.

  I smiled and sipped my wine.

  * * *

  By the time Simon and Fae left me for the night, I was thoroughly buzzed and swaddled in the pale blue silk pajama set I never wore because it was too pretty to wrinkle and, anyway, didn’t only women in classic movies wear fabulous designer nightwear? Most nights I slept in the first oversized t-shirt my hands landed on when they reached into my dresser drawer, but tonight I had little choice in the matter — Simon was being insistent.

  The pajamas had been a Christmas gift from him last year, purchased because they’d apparently “bring out the blue in my eyes” and, as an added bonus, help to trick men into thinking I was the kind of classy lady who wore silk to bed. While rummaging through my wardrobe — as was his habit, whenever he was cooped up in my tiny studio for too long — Simon had been dismayed to find them folded in a neat pile with the tags still attached, in a small nook at the back of my closet. He’d retrieved them, made a fuss about my neglect of a perfectly good pajama set, and, of course, forced me to put them on immediately.

  I had to admit that his taste was impeccable. As soon as I pulled the sleek tank top over my head and slid my legs into the flowing kimono pants, I fell in love with the feeling of silk as it brushed against my skin like a caress. And he’d been right — my gray-blue eyes did look brighter in the mirror in contrast to the fabric.

  During the pajama drama, Fae located a bag of microwave popcorn somewhere in the depths of my cabinets — quite possibly leftover by the previous tenant, but I had a good buzz on and I wasn’t feeling picky tonight — and popped a comedy into my DVD player. The two of them clucked over me like mother hens for nearly an hour bef
ore I finally forced them out of my apartment. They would’ve stayed with me all night if I’d asked, but I was craving some alone time after the day I’d had.

  The credits were rolling and my eyes were drooping when the buzzer rang sharply three times in quick succession. I rose and stretched the kinks out of my back, walking to the door with my wineglass in hand. I figured it might be Simon and Fae, back to ensure that I hadn’t pulled a Sylvia Plath and put my head in the oven or started bottling my own urine like Howard Hughes.

  I pressed the intercom and was surprised by the voice I heard on the opposite end.

  “Babe! It’s Desmond!”

  What was he doing here?

  “Um, hey, Des. Did you need something?” I buzzed back, my brow furrowed in confusion.

  “I have your jacket! You left it at my place after the movie a few weeks back. I was in the neighborhood so I figured I’d swing by and return it to you.”

  I glanced at my watch — it was 9:00 p.m. on a Friday night. Maybe he really had been in the area, but it seemed unlikely. Guys who looked like Des didn’t spend their free evenings playing errand boy for former girlfriends. Then again, I could be totally overthinking things. I’d had too much wine to judge properly.

  I sighed and buzzed him in.

  “Hey, babe.” Desmond leaned down and kissed my cheek as soon as I pulled open the door. “Nice jammies.”

  I smiled. “Thanks.”

  “You okay?” he asked, his eyes scanning my face. My makeup was long gone and I knew that my eyes were still puffy and red from earlier.

  I nodded, but didn’t explain the residual traces of tears.

  “Here,” he said handing over my jacket.

  “Uh, thanks,” I repeated, feeling awkward. Southern hospitality practically demanded I let him in, rather than leave him standing on the stoop like a stranger, but I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. I was half-inebriated, braless, and feeling vulnerable after the day I’d had, so a visit from an ex was probably not the greatest idea. As I deliberated, I watched a delivery man walk through my hall toward Mrs. Johansson’s apartment next door, the brown bag in his arms wafting the deliciously greasy aroma of lo mien noodles and egg rolls.