The Lie

by Chad Kultgen

  chapter thirteen

  I was so fucking stupid. Everything with Erin was good, really good. I just could never see it as great, even though it actually was. We got the highest grade in our class on our lab final, and over that winter break she met my mom and dad the day before she left to go back to Florida, where her family lived. Both of my parents loved her and she seemed really comfortable around them. She was probably the closest thing to a perfect girl that could have existed for me at that point. The only problem was, at that point, I couldn’t see it.

  Our second semester started pretty much the same way they all did. First classes, syllabi, all the usual crap. We didn’t have any classes together, but we saw each other pretty much every day. I almost never stayed at McElvaney, because she had her own apartment and it was a lot better than having to deal with my douchebag roommate.

  I guess we were probably less than a month into our second semester when I woke up one morning in Erin’s bed and she was staring at me. She said, “What do you want to do today?”

  I said, “What is today?”

  She said, “Sunday.”

  I said, “No classes. I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  She said, “I’m pretty sure I want to tell you that I love you.”

  And that was the first time she ever said it to me. It was just a reflex for me. I had never thought about it. I didn’t know if I actually did or not, but I said, “I love you, too,” knowing that we had been together long enough that if I didn’t say it back it would be weird and she’d start crying and everything.

  She said, “I know,” then started kissing me and then sucked my dick for a few minutes and then had sex with me twice before we ever got out of bed. She really was incredible but I couldn’t see it. I had a girl that any other guy would fucking kill someone to have and she was completely in love with me and I couldn’t see it. Everything that happened after it could have been avoided if I had just seen it.

  Around noon that day I took a shower and we went to get something to eat. For the rest of the day I was in some kind of haze, thinking about Erin telling me she loved me and wondering if I really loved her. I guess there was just something about the entire relationship that seemed a little lackluster, even though it wasn’t. I didn’t ever directly think about Heather, but I knew that I had been through it all once before—been through the first kiss, the first fuck, the I love yous, been through all of it before, and the second time around it just wasn’t as good. No, it’s not that it wasn’t as good, it was actually better, because it felt more real, more adult, even though it barely was. But I think that was the problem. After Heather I just couldn’t give myself over to it the way I did the first time, and I didn’t want it to be real or adult. I wanted it to be as all-consuming as it was with Heather, as it was the first time. What I never realized was that Erin offered a lot of firsts I just took for granted. She was the first girl I could actually have a meaningful conversation with about science or anything academic really. She was the first girl who made me laugh, really made me laugh. She was the first girl who I think actually really loved me. And somehow I overlooked all of that shit.

  Our relationship went on without her knowing how I felt for months. We would tell each other that we loved each other. She would mean it and I would only kind of mean it. We’d still spend virtually every night together. We had sex every day that we did spend together, and on the surface our relationship seemed pretty perfect. I even remember telling Brett at one point how I actually felt about the whole thing, that I had actually thought about breaking up with Erin a few times because I just wasn’t as into it as I had wanted to be. I expected him to try to hook me up with some girl that he would force to have sex with me or something in order to get me out of the relationship, but he actually said something like, “Kyle, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but honestly Erin could be the one girl on planet Earth who is perfect for you. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t cheat. It’s a given at some point that you’ll have to fuck someone else. But that’s not the problem you’re talking about here. I can’t actually understand what you’re saying about not being completely in love with her, because love is a lie created by women to trick men into believing they have to sacrifice their entire lives to marriage and family, but I will say you should give some serious consideration to your relationship and how lucky you are to have found someone like Erin.”

  I said something like, “Wow, I expected you to set me up with another girl in your Jacuzzi or something.”

  He said something like, “Heather was a cunt, Kyle. I would have hired a hit man to put a slug in her fucking skull if you would have wanted me to. Getting a sorority skank to fuck you after she dumped you was the least I could have done. Erin is not a cunt. She, in fact, is one of the rare women I’ve ever met who doesn’t have an ounce of cunt in her. You know I don’t advocate marriage, but I’ve always known you’d wind up in it for the long haul at some point with some slut.”

  I said, “Erin’s not a slut.”

  He said, “Exactly my point. Think about what you’d be losing if you were to break up with Erin. You may not find another girl like her in your lifetime. She’s rare, Kyle.”

  He was right, she was rare and I understood that. That understanding is what kept us together. Every time I’d start to feel bored or like everything Erin and I were doing I had done before and better, I’d just think back to that conversation with Brett and I’d go to sleep with Erin and still be with Erin when I’d wake up the next day. In time I realized that what I felt for her was actually love. I came to terms with the fact that it wasn’t as strong or as passionate as what I had with Heather, but it was far more practical and that would eventually mean we would have much more reason to stay together for much longer.

  Then it was somewhere around midterms that I saw Heather for the first time since we broke up. She was walking toward me across the lawn by Dallas Hall and we made eye contact. It was like a sledgehammer to the butthole. My stomach tied itself in a knot and I felt like I was going to vomit instantaneously. I got hot all over and my armpits started sweating. I assumed the feeling was identical to being sentenced to death.

  We obviously saw each other and we were already on paths that would lead us to practically run into each other so it was inevitable. Neither of us veered off course or pretended not to see the other one so there, in front of Dallas Hall, I think a few days before midterms, Heather came up to me and gave me a hug, which I returned. She felt good, which pissed me off and made me sad at the same time. I was pissed off because it would have been much easier to deal with if she had gotten fat, and I was sad because I knew I wouldn’t get to fuck her.

  She said, “You look good. How have you been?”

  I said, “Fine. You look good, too. And how have you been?”

  She said, “Also fine.”

  I couldn’t help it. I said, “You dating anyone?”

  She said, “Yeah, yeah. You?”

  I said, “Yeah, for a while now.”

  She said, “Cool. Very cool.”

  Then we just kind of stared at each other for a few seconds and she said, “Do you want to go get something with me, a coffee or something?”

  I knew I shouldn’t go. I knew it was a bad fucking idea, but she smelled so good and just hearing her voice again made me want to get as much of her as I could, to have something to hold on to. It was almost like she was recharging some battery that had been dead in me since we broke up and I wanted to get it as full as possible.

  I said, “Yeah, sure,” and we walked over to Java City in the Hughes-Trigg market. We got a couple of coffees and sat down and just talked to each other. It was amazingly civil. I wish she would have been a cunt or started talking about whoever her boyfriend was or something that would have made it easy for me to see why I was better off without her, but that didn’t happen. She never mentioned her boyfriend and I never mentioned Erin. We just sat there and talked about TV shows and movies and my
parents and her mom and her sister and we made each other laugh. It was comfortable in a way I hadn’t expected, and after an hour or so she finally said, “Well, I should get going, but it was really good talking to you, Kyle. I guess I’ve missed you more than I thought.”

  I said, “Yeah. Me too.”

  She said, “Maybe we’ll have to do this again sometime.”

  I said, “Yeah. That’d be nice.”

  She said, “Okay. See you later.”

  I said, “Bye,” and she walked away.

  I fucking hate myself every time I think back to that conversation. At one point I really fucking hated Heather. I guess that point was somewhere around the time I found out she was sucking some other guy’s cock. I had held on to that hatred for a long time. Eventually, once I had been with Erin long enough, it just turned to a numbness, and I guess that’s maybe what the problem was with me and Erin. I just couldn’t feel as much as I did with Heather.

  Anyway, that conversation took the numbness away. It didn’t replace it with anything, but just sitting there talking to Heather made me realize I didn’t hate her anymore and I felt like she was a good person again. That conversation actually made me entertain the idea of just being friends with her so I could have her in my life in some capacity. I was such a fucking retard.

  She didn’t say anything negative about me or about Erin like I semi-expected her to. After we broke up I had clung to this image of Heather as a horrible cunt, which, it turns out, she absolutely was. But after that conversation she wasn’t anything to me other than a really nice person I used to love, and I was glad there was a chance she would be back in my life. What a fucking fag.

  That night when I went back to Erin’s apartment I didn’t tell her that I had seen Heather. I wondered if Heather told her boyfriend about seeing me.

  chapter fourteen

  I don’t know why I never told Brian about seeing Kyle that day, but I didn’t. I didn’t really think he’d get jealous or anything. Brian wasn’t really a jealous type of guy. I mean when Josh grabbed my ass when I was sleeping that one time, Brian didn’t like even care at all. I guess I don’t know why I didn’t tell him about Kyle. Maybe I wanted to hold on to it for myself or something. I don’t know. Whatever.

  Before I saw Kyle that second semester was really fun, though. I got to help with all of the stuff for rush week, and it was seriously cool to see a new group of girls doing exactly what I had done the year before. When we had the two-party day Andrea told me she thought I should tell my abortion story like she did the year before, and I thought it was a good idea. It was like Andrea was the only one I had told up to that point, and it seemed like it would be really cool to share that with the rest of the Kappas on the two-party day. I didn’t cry when I told the story, even though I thought I would. I guess at that point I was just over it, you know?

  And everything with Brian was pretty good. Josh hung around a lot more and was always saying really nasty shit about me like how he wanted to fuck me—I mean, like the ways he would fuck me if he fucked me, like doggy style and shit. He was seriously nasty like right in front of Brian and whoever else happened to be in the room, and Brian would just laugh it off. It seriously grossed me out, but I got used to Josh’s sense of humor eventually, and the three of us hung out a lot. Josh wasn’t ever like my best friend or anything, but I guess I like learned to tolerate him for the most part.

  I only saw Brett a few times here and there at parties and he always kept his distance. I never knew if he was mad at me for the whole thing with Kyle or if he just didn’t care or what the deal was, but we never talked. And then at a certain point I found out that he had fucked like pretty much every girl in my house except me, and I was like seriously wondering if it was some kind of weird revenge thing with him or if he had just fucked like pretty much every girl on campus or something.

  And then I saw Kyle. It was seriously weird seeing him and talking to him. It seemed like he was happy with whoever his new girlfriend was. We didn’t really talk about either one of our significant others in that conversation, so I left it like wondering what she was like. I figured she was a band nerd or something like that, you know, right up Kyle’s alley.

  After our conversation it wasn’t like I was thinking about Kyle every day or anything, but it did make me kind of miss him, you know like miss him being a part of my life. I didn’t necessarily want to get back together or anything, but I thought about us being friends and if that would like work or if it would be really like weird. I mean I was glad he wasn’t mad at me anymore, and he seemed cool with me, and I guess there was some part of me that just kind of missed hanging out with him and everything. And I admit, I did think about fucking him a few times and I missed that a little, too. All of that shit seems so stupid now that I know what an asshole he is. Whatever.

  And that’s kind of where I was in terms of like headspace and everything when Kappa and ATO threw our annual Heaven and Hell party kind of toward the end of our second semester, maybe like a month and a half left or something. Kappa and ATO had just done Sing-Song together, and we were like the best hands down, so we were really excited to throw the party. It had been cool the year before, but I thought I could make it much more awesome, so I like volunteered to be on the planning committee and everyone was cool with that because I was seriously an awesome party planner.

  We turned the ATO basement into hell, with like red lights and dry ice and everything, and we turned their upstairs into heaven, with like white streamers and white pillows everywhere, and we turned the first floor into purgatory, with no decorations or anything. It was seriously amazing-looking when we finished everything. And then all the people we invited had to dress up like angels or demons or whatever, and this year we put a little thing on the invitations that said “please no offensive or insensitive costumes.” I seriously did not want some guy to come dressed as like the Grim Reaper with aborted fetuses dangling from his belt again.

  The party started out really good and everyone was complimenting me on the decorations and everything and Cam got his brother to hook up like pretty much anything you could possibly want for a party.

  So I was dancing with Andrea out in the backyard by the kegs where there was a little open space and Brian came up and was like, “Open your mouth.” So I did and he dropped some E in my mouth. He was like, “Cam gave it to me. Said it’s really fucking good.” Then he put one in his mouth, too, and kissed me.

  He was like, “I’m gonna go grab another beer. I’ll be right back,” so I just kept dancing with Andrea and waiting for the E to kick in. And when it did…holy fucking shit. I don’t know if Brian slid the E that he had in his mouth into my mouth or what, I mean I was pretty drunk already and had done a few lines in the bathroom upstairs, but it felt like I had been double-dosed or something. Seriously, I mean I either had to have done two tabs or the shit Cam’s brother got was like pure chemical MDMA or something. I remember while I was dancing I started having like mild hallucinations and everything. Like when the bass would get really loud in a song I thought I could like see people and trees and everything rippling like waves in a pond from the sound. It was seriously trippy. I had done E a bunch of times and I’d never had a reaction like that. It wasn’t really that bad for like the first twenty or thirty minutes, but then I started feeling kind of sick.

  Brian came back and he was like, “You don’t look good, for real. Do you need to lie down or something?”

  I was like, “Yeah, maybe.”

  He was like, “I’ll walk you over to my house.”

  I was like, “Why? I can just find a couch here or something.”

  He was like, “Pike’s just down the street and it’ll be more quiet and everything. Once you start feeling better we’ll come back. You really don’t look good, babe. In case you have to puke or something we should probably not be in the middle of a party.”

  I was like, “Okay.” I mean, everything he said made sense at the time, so I took his hand an
d we started walking out the front door of the ATO house and Josh came up to us and was like, “Where you kids going?”

  Brian was like, “Heather’s not feeling too good. We’re gonna go back to our house.”

  Josh was like, “I’ll come with you guys. I need to get some rubbers from my room. There’s some skank who wants a piece of my hog upstairs.”

  I was like, “Gross.”

  As we were walking back to the Pike house I started feeling even more weird, like not just sick but really fucked up, like super fucking drunk. I was like, “Brian, this E is seriously fucking me up. Is it fucking you up?”

  He was like, “No, babe, I feel really good.”

  Josh was like, “Maybe you got a bad tab or some shit or maybe you drank too much and the booze and the drugs are fucking you up. I’ve been there before.”

  I was like, “Yeah, that’s probably it.”

  So we got back to the Pike house and Brian took me up to his room, put me in his bed, took off my clothes, and turned off the lights. He was like, “I’ll go get you a glass of water.”

  I was like, “Okay,” and closed my eyes. I don’t know how much time had passed but I woke up to Brian laying on top of me and kissing me. I was still seriously out of it. Like it was so bad I kind of couldn’t move right, like I was more drunk than I had ever been in my life, but I didn’t feel drunk exactly. It was weird, but the E made his kisses feel really good so I kissed him back and he took off his clothes and was like, “Let’s not go back to the party.”

  I was like, “Okay.”

  So we made out naked for a few minutes I think and then the door to his room kind of opened and Josh was like, “What’s going on in here, kids?” And I remember when he opened the door I could hear one of Dane Cook’s stand-up CDs playing in some room down the hall. He was talking about wanting to be a criminal or something when he was in high school and making his friend do like a home invasion.