The Lie

by Chad Kultgen

  I was like, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, I just wanted one last time, you know?”

  And he actually looked sad when I left. I seriously fucking hated him. I mean I guess I still do. Whatever.

  So after that I went over to Brett’s house. His maid let me in and he was pretty surprised to see me, too. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to get him to fuck me but I tried anyway.

  He was like, “What are you doing here?”

  I was like, “I have some stuff to talk about with you.”

  He was like, “Well, I don’t want to talk to you. So leave.”

  I knew there was no point in beating around the bush so I was just like, “I know you and Kyle gave me herpes.”

  I thought he would have been more surprised but he was just like, “Okay, and now what?”

  I was like, “Now Kyle is completely fucked, but you still have like a chance to avoid having your life ruined.”

  He was like, “Get to it.”

  I was like, “I just came from Kyle’s place. He fucked me.”

  He was like, “No he didn’t.”

  I was like, “He did. All I had to do was tell him I still like loved him and he caved.”

  He was like, “No, Kyle. Why?”

  I was like, “I’m going to the health center immediately after leaving here and telling them I was raped.”

  He was like, “Did he fuck you without a condom? He knows you have herpes.”

  I was like, “No, he used a condom, but like date rape has a lot of gray area, you know? He’s fucked. He’s getting accused of rape and that’s it for him.”

  He was like, “You can’t really be this malicious.”

  I was like, “You fucking assholes gave me herpes. My life is fucking ruined. Do you get that?”

  He was like, “I guess. So am I getting accused of rape too?”

  I was like, “Not even close. You’re going to be a daddy.”

  He was like, “I’m pretty sure I have to fuck you to be the father of any child and that will never happen again as long as I live because you’re a fucking whore.”

  I was like, “A fucking whore who is pregnant with your child right now.”

  He was like, “First of all, that’s impossible. Second—”

  I was like, “Let me just like stop you at first of all, because first of all you did fuck me. Last month you were fucking like five girls at the same time. I was one of them and you got me pregnant.”

  He was like, “I remember that specific incident. I used a condom.”

  I was like, “Well, they’re not like a hundred percent effective.”

  He was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re not pregnant.”

  I was like, “I took the pregnancy test this morning and you’re more than welcome to have it verified by a doctor if you want. And you’re like the only guy who could even be the father, so if you want to do a DNA test, I’m down for that too.”

  He was like, “Is this even possible?”

  I was like, “Yeah, totally possible.”

  He was like, “You know I have no obligation beyond financial to you if you have this child. I will never be a part of its life and I will never be a part of yours.”

  I was like, “Somehow I think that like when I tell your dad that he’s going to be a grandfather, he’ll make sure you’re a part of your kid’s life.”

  He just stood there for a few seconds, then he was like, “And so…”

  I was like, “And so what?”

  He was like, “And so…what’s my out? You’re obviously here to offer me some way out of this.”

  I was like, “I guess so. So like here’s what I was thinking. I’ll have an abortion, which you have to pay for, if you propose to me and marry me.”

  He was like, “Out of the question.”

  I was like, “Then I have the baby and tell your dad that I’m pregnant with it today.”

  He was like, “Wait. All I have to do is propose to you?”

  I was like, “And actually marry me. With no prenup.”

  He laughed and was like, “You can conjure up all the babies you want for my father—there’s no way around the prenup. Even he’ll tell you that.”

  I was like, “Fine. You have to marry me and we have to stay married for at least like a year and you have to propose to me publicly in front of my sorority house. And if I get the abortion and you don’t propose I tell your dad everything, and your stepmom especially, how you made me murder their grandchild.”

  He thought about it and then he was like, “And if I agree to this, will you spare Kyle?”

  I was like, “You can’t stop Kyle from being fucked. You’re the only one who can potentially save yourself.”

  He was like, “Why are you doing this? Are you fucking insane?”

  I was like, “Not at all. I was like thinking about getting a gun and blowing both your dicks off. That was insane. This is totally sane.”

  He was like, “And what happens at the end of a year?”

  I was like, “We take it from there.”

  He was like, “But I can divorce you and you’ll never tell anyone of this?”

  I was like, “Yeah.”

  He was like, “This is not fucking happening.”

  I was like, “Yeah, it actually is. So like figure out what you’re going to do.”

  He was like, “Well, it’s kind of a big fucking decision so you’re going to have to give me a little more time.”

  I was like, “Okay, you have until Friday. By then you’ll probably already start to see how Kyle’s life is falling apart. Maybe that’ll help you make your decision.”

  Then I left and went to the health center. I worked up some tears and went through the front door and I was like, “Excuse me, I um, I was just like date-raped I think and I want to make sure I’m okay,” and then I just broke down crying.

  The lady at the desk was like, “Oh honey, I’m so sorry,” and she took me back to a room where a doctor examined me and found like “signs of forced vaginal penetration,” which is what he wrote in his little report. I had to keep crying but I wanted to like do a fucking dance I was so happy that Kyle’s life was over.

  chapter eighteen

  I called Kyle immediately after she left to confirm her report that he had, in fact, fucked her. He confirmed it. When I asked him why in the name of anything he held sacred he would have done such a thing, his only response was to tell me that through it all, even through engineering the plan that was meant to bring about her demise, he had always known that she was the one girl he would ever truly love. And to have her, even if it was just for one last time, was too tempting an offer for him to refuse. He said he wanted to feel like he did when they first met. It was the worst thing he ever said to me. I explained to him the dilemma I was faced with. He explained that he thought we could just go to someone and reveal her scheme, but she could counter with her knowledge of our own scheme to give her herpes, which there were witnesses to corroborate. We were the only people who knew about her plan. She could deny it and it would be her word against ours.

  The person Kyle had grown into in those last months was one I would have never suspected capable of such a horrible relapse. But I will never understand this lie of love and its hold over people like Kyle. I told him about the conversation I had with Heather. He held strong to the notion that somewhere within herself she actually did still love him, that the sex she had with him wasn’t all an act, that somewhere deep down they would always have a connection, and he reasoned that this connection would keep her from levying the accusation of rape against him. He was incorrect, and in spite of all that was to follow for Kyle I still believe it was the shattering of this hope he had—that she still cared for him—that hurt him the most.

  After my phone call with Kyle I sat down and thought seriously about all of my options. I had a cousin who had impregnated a whore several years prior at Boston College, did not marry the girl, and ignored the child
except for his financial obligation. He had been on track to go to work for my father’s company and he was very well liked, not only by my father but by virtually everyone in our family. But once the child was born and he failed to marry its mother or pay it any attention, my father and most of the rest of the family quickly severed ties with him, effectively ruining his life financially. I could very easily see that treatment being mimicked in my case.

  I remembered a specific conversation I had with my father at roughly the time of the birth of my cousin’s child, in which he explained to me that we would not be attending my cousin’s birthday party because the most valuable thing we have is our family’s name and our cousin had tarnished that name. For that my father would never forgive him. I was young at the time, but my father’s words landed with significant impact. I remembered him saying to me that my cousin was essentially dead, a member of the family to be forgotten.

  With that said I essentially could expect one of two outcomes if I chose not to propose to Heather. The first would be that my father would see me just as he saw my cousin and excommunicate me from the family, severing all of my ties to anyone in the family, to any hope of being part of his business, and to any claim to the resource my family possessed. The second would be that my father would be severely disappointed, but because I was his son and not his nephew he would take more pity on me than he did my cousin, and after many years of repairing our relationship and doing anything and everything he said to do with my life I would be allowed all of the original privileges that came with being my father’s son. With this second outcome I also assumed that I would be required to be a part of the child’s life, even if I was not a part of its mother’s. I knew my father would not stand for a blood member of his family, let alone his own grandchild, being neglected. The former seemed more likely to me, and the latter seemed a prospect that was almost worse.

  My other option was to marry Heather. In truth I enjoyed fucking her. I had had far better, but I had had far worse as well. As a person she was clearly deplorable and her personality was vacant and uninteresting, but so too were the personalities of virtually every whore I had ever met. And marriage was the path my father had chosen for me to begin with. He would be more than proud if I was engaged upon my graduation and I would start work for him a few weeks after. These were the things I had already decided to deny in whatever life I might lead. But their comfort seemed appealing, much more appealing than the alternatives.

  There was no good decision available to me so I made a bad one. I took Heather to the McCarthy Family Planning Clinic, where for the second time I paid for her to have an abortion.

  chapter nineteen

  I couldn’t believe she actually did it. As she sat across from me at the disciplinary hearing she never even showed one sign of remorse or regret that she was ruining my life. It was unbelievable to me that she could be so callous.

  Luckily there wasn’t enough evidence to bring criminal charges. It was basically her word against mine. But it turns out that it didn’t really matter that there was no criminal case. The disciplinary committee was enough to totally fuck me over.

  I remember the guy who was in charge of it said, “Just because this case had no criminal evidence, it doesn’t mean we don’t take it very seriously. Our job as administrators is to make sure every student here feels that this is an environment which is safe and conducive to learning. If a student feels threatened and that threat is found by us to be real then we are required to take some form of action. With that said, we’d now like to hear from each of you.”

  Heather was already crying fake tears. What a fucking cunt.

  She took her seat in front of the three members of the committee and said, “This is hard for me.”

  The guy running it said, “I know. Take your time, but please be as detailed as possible in your retelling of the events that took place so we can get an accurate picture.”

  She said, “I went over to his house because like it’s our senior year and everything and we did really used to care about each other and I like wanted to have like one last conversation with him about everything and put all of the bad stuff that happened between us like in the past, you know?”

  It was un-fucking-real to me how good she was at this. I wondered if she was just naturally talented or if her hatred of me boosted her performance up to the Oscar-winning level I was witnessing.

  She said, “After we talked a little bit he leaned in and kissed me and I like totally admit that I didn’t mind the kiss. It was actually kind of nice, you know? And then he started getting a little more aggressive and I started to feel uncomfortable a little bit, but I just kind of let it happen anyway. And then he started taking off my clothes and I got a little more uncomfortable and I like told him I was uncomfortable and he was like, ‘No you’re not. Just let it happen.’”

  There was no way for me to object during this or I would have. I don’t think I’ve ever told a girl, “Just let it happen,” in my life. I don’t think anyone outside of a bad after-school special about date rape has ever even used that fucking phrase.

  She said, “He got out a condom, thank God, and then he started having sex with me. He was on top. As soon as he like…penetrated me I was like, ‘Stop, I do not want to do this.’”

  And then she really brought on the waterworks. I don’t even know how to describe it. She was really good at what she was doing. I’ll give her that.

  She said, “I tried to get him off me but he held me down and after like a minute of struggling I just kind of went limp, you know, like my mind just shut off and I was like seeing everything like I was floating outside my body. I just wanted it to be over as soon as possible.”

  One of the people on this committee was a woman. She actually fucking came out from behind the desk she was sitting at, hugged Heather, and shot me a “fuck you, asshole” look. I didn’t even have to tell my side of the story to know I was fucked with this bitch, but I did it anyway. My story was the real version, the true version. But of course everyone believed the lie.

  I had to wait for forty-eight hours for the official decision after the committee’s deliberation. I got a letter delivered to my apartment. Not a phone call, nothing in person, just a fucking letter that read:

  Dear Kyle Gibson,

  After careful examination of the evidence in your case, we must inform you of our decision to initiate immediate expulsion for your involvement in what we feel is a gross violation of student conduct.

  If you have any questions please contact the Office of Student Conduct.

  And that’s how I got fucking expelled with about a month and a half left in my senior year. I was so pissed at Heather I wanted to give her fucking herpes again, or AIDS or something. But there was no fucking recourse for me whatsoever. Once the disciplinary committee made a ruling, there was no appeal process. It was absolute. I looked back at every little step along the way with her, from the night we met all the way up through getting expelled, and I just couldn’t believe that that’s how everything was going to end for me.

  I, of course, had to tell my parents. They weren’t too fucking happy. I never really knew if they believed me, either, that Heather cooked this shit up just to fuck me over. I think my dad might have, but I think my mom actually thought I raped Heather.

  Word traveled pretty fucking fast to UT Houston and I got a pretty similar letter from them about a week later telling me that my acceptance into their medical program had been revoked after hearing about my recent expulsion and involvement in an act of student misconduct.

  I moved back in with my parents while everyone else was graduating and tried to start figuring out how to pick up the pieces.

  chapter twenty

  I like knew it was going to happen so it wasn’t really a surprise or anything but it was still the best moment of my life like hands down, even though it was kind of fucked up. It was just after graduation and I was going back to the Kappa house where we were going to have like a grad
uation party with all of our families and everything. When I got closer to the house I saw Brett in a suit standing on the front porch. My mom and my sister were both with me and like pretty much most of my sorority sisters.

  I was like, “Hey, Brett. What’s up?”

  He got down on one knee and flipped open this ring box, and I went from being so happy, because up to that point he was doing everything just like he said he would, to being ready to kick him in the balls. The ring in the fucking box was the exact same one Kyle gave me. It was the same fucking cubic zirconia.

  I couldn’t be like, “You fucking asshole,” in front of everyone, so I just had to be like, “Oh my God,” and act all surprised and everything, and of course I accepted. He hugged me and kissed me in front of my mom just like I told him he had to do and I tried to put it out of my mind that the ring was a fake. I knew I could make him get me a real one later. But it did kind of take something from the day, that like I had to show pretty much everyone that ring and pretend it was real, and I know there were some of my sisters who had seen the one Kyle gave me who could totally tell it was the same ring. But nobody said anything.

  Later when Brett and I were alone, I was like, “You’re a fucking asshole. Why’d you give me that ring?”

  He was like, “Fuck you.”

  I was like, “You can’t be all pissy through this whole thing.”

  He was like, “I can be however I want to be.”

  I was like, “But you’re going to get me a real ring at some point, right?”

  He was like, “What do you mean by real? Can you touch it? Then it’s fucking real. That’s the only fucking ring you’re ever getting from me.”