Tell Me Lies

by Carola Lovering

  CJ had called again and left another voice mail. I knew she wanted to ask me all about the race, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her back. I couldn’t force another minute of simulated enthusiasm, but I listened to her message.

  Hi, Luce, it’s Seej again. Just calling to say congratulations . . . thirteen-point-one miles, I just can’t believe it and I am so impressed! I want to hear everything but you’re probably out celebrating with your friends, so no need to call back if you’re busy, just call later when you can, okay? I love you so much, G and Daddy say congratulations, too. We are all so proud of you, baby girl! Talk later. Bye, Sass.

  CJ’s voice, all maternal and bursting with genuine pride, sent me over the edge. I lay back down on the bed and sobbed silently.

  When Lydia and Bree arrived home hours later I had fallen asleep, and I woke to them laughing about something. In the past twenty-four hours the two of them had become some kind of synced-up unit.

  “Are you feeling better?” One of them cracked the door open.

  “Not really. I feel a little feverish.” I propped up on an elbow.

  “You don’t look so good.” Lydia frowned. “No offense.”

  “Do you want some Advil? Or tea? Or soup!” Bree’s voice had risen several octaves, which told me she was several beers deep.

  “I’m okay, but thanks.”

  They went off to shower, and when they reappeared next to my bed they were dressed and ready to go out. They were going to the Surf Lodge in Montauk and asked if I was up for it, but I said I didn’t feel well enough.

  After Lydia and Bree left I caved and called Stephen one more time, but it just rang and rang and went to voice mail. I turned on the TV in the living room and gazed at it inanely. An old Julia Roberts movie was playing but I couldn’t absorb a minute of it. I was pathetic, I knew, more than pathetic. In the bathroom I looked in the mirror and barely recognized myself; puffy bags hung under my eyes, my skin was blotchy and my hair a tangled, sweaty mess. I looked horrible. I was suddenly ravenous and devoured a bag of Tate’s chocolate chip cookies, too distracted to make an actual meal. I felt like a creature, a rabid thing.

  All I wanted to do was get the hell out of Lydia’s house and the hell out of Sagaponack. I closed my eyes and willed myself to pass out so that it would be morning, but I couldn’t sleep. A chill floated through the window and I listened to the wind rustle the trees against the glass. I heard Bree and Lyd come in late, heard them rummage through the kitchen for a snack and remembered I’d eaten all of Bree’s Tate’s cookies—those were her favorite. I listened to them giggle and chat for a while until they finally went upstairs.

  The next day I was grateful when Bree said she wanted to get back to the city on the earlier side because she was going on a second date with Evan Donovan, Stephen’s old roommate from Baird who had recently moved to New York. Bree had had a crush on Evan forever, so Stephen had set them up and the four of us had gone on a double date the week before.

  We took a late-morning Jitney back the way we came, worming through the clogged Hamptons traffic onto the LIE and back through the Midtown Tunnel, into the heart of Manhattan.

  I was so relieved to be back in the city and out of the stuffy, memory-filled Sagaponack house that I nearly kissed the sidewalk.

  After Bree left for her date, delirious with butterflies, I sat in my bed like a dejected, anxious freak. My legs ached from the run. It was Sunday night, seventy-two hours since I’d last spoken to Stephen. I decided that something could be seriously, seriously wrong. If I didn’t hear from him that night, I was going to call one of his friends. I would have to. I picked up my cell and sent him One. Last. Text.

  LUCY: Are you alive?

  My phone vibrated thirty seconds later.

  STEPHEN: Yeah. Been at my dad’s in Bayville all weekend. Needed to get out of the city to study. Sorry, I know you’re probably upset. I have a ton of work this week, but can you meet me on Friday? We’ll talk.

  * * *

  Five excruciatingly long days passed. On Friday evening I ducked out of work at 5:45 to make it to the Lower East Side by six. It was earlier than I should’ve left—we had a big pitch on Monday—but Harry had pulled me into his office and asked why I looked like I hadn’t slept in a week. After I broke down and told him everything, he gave me the green light to leave early, not without a discerning Harry pep talk and a spritz of Acqua di Parma.

  It had been two full weeks since I’d laid eyes on Stephen. I was so nervous I could barely walk because I was shaking, my gut a hollow pit of doom. I reread his text.

  STEPHEN: Meet at Dudley’s on Orchard at 6.

  I didn’t bother trying to negotiate a later meeting time. I had been cooped up with my thoughts for too long, forming one elaborate scenario after the next, making myself insane. I just needed to talk to him. Things had gotten all fucked up again, but we would fix them. We always did.

  He will always come back for more, Lucy. He won’t give it up until he has to. Dr. Wattenbarger’s words resounded in my head—he had meant them as a warning; I savored them as hope.

  I took a cab downtown so I’d have time to reapply makeup. I was wearing my jean jacket and fitted white pants that Stephen always said made my legs look good. I needed to make him remember how crazy he was about me, to make him feel regretful and sorry for acting like a self-involved jerk for the past two weeks. But it was hard to apply eyeliner and mascara with the cab swerving down Broadway, and I didn’t feel pretty by the time the taxi pulled to a stop on Orchard. My eyes looked small and overdone from the sloppy eyeliner job and lack of sleep, but it was too late to do anything about it.

  When I walked into Dudley’s Stephen was already there, sitting at the bar sipping a Scotch and soda. It was a relief just to see him. The scene was too familiar. How many times had I walked into a bar to meet Stephen and slid onto the seat beside him, my heart thrashing inside my chest?

  Except this time his eyes didn’t light up when he saw me, he didn’t say Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in the enchanting way that only he can.

  Instead, he barely glanced up; he subtly raised his eyebrows to acknowledge my arrival and my relief was replaced by pure panic. Stephen spun his almost empty glass around in his hands, the watery ice clinking.

  “Hey.” One side of his mouth slid into a forced smile. I removed my jacket and folded it over my legs.

  “Hi.” I wanted my voice to sound confident, but I knew he’d be able to trace the nerves.

  “How was your weekend?” he asked finally. He didn’t look at me but stared vaguely past my shoulder, shifting uncomfortably on the barstool.

  “It was fine.”

  “How was the half marathon?”

  “It went well, thanks for asking about it a week later.” I hated how sarcasm made me feel—like a spiteful, small person—but I couldn’t help it. Underneath my trepidation I was manically livid. I had been alone with my thoughts for so long that saying them out loud was shocking, almost comical.

  Stephen sighed. The bartender appeared and asked what I wanted. I didn’t know or care. A bottle of Xanax. A loaded gun. I ordered a vodka tonic. Stephen drained the rest of his glass and ordered another Scotch. At least he was ordering another drink, which meant he was staying. That was a good sign.

  “Stephen,” I began calmly. I vowed to stay calm. If I lost my cool, I wouldn’t get anywhere with him. “I can’t just sit here and pretend to have a normal conversation with you about the half marathon. You were supposed to be there. You’ve ignored me for the past two weeks and I have no idea why.”

  I studied his face for signs of remorse or guilt. His face was like magic to me, it always had been. The emeralds he had for eyes, the good, even nose, his ample cheeks and soft, rounded chin. But nothing about his expression was regretful or even defensive. Instead he appeared completely impassive, almost bored. I don’t feel guilt. I remembered him saying those words the night we first slept together at my apartment. While he was still living with
Alice.

  “I’m sorry, Lucy,” he said. “I’ve been busy as hell. Law school is a real bitch.”

  “I know, I’ve heard,” I said, my cool swaying off-kilter at his stark indifference. “But guess what? You’re not the only busy person in New York. I have a full-time job. A full-time job is also a real bitch.”

  “Lucy.” He looked me straight in the eye for the first time since I walked into the bar, his expression hard. “This just isn’t . . . I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.”

  It was in moments like this that time seemed to stop—moments so vividly painful, almost surreal in the pain that they promised. My insides lurched. My breath slipped out of my throat and I thought I was going to choke. Every part of my body went numb, and I had the sensation that I was deep in a lucid dream. I blinked several times but still found myself in the dimly lit bar, bad rock music playing in the background, the back of my head woozy from the sip of vodka on an empty stomach.

  “What?” When I spoke it wasn’t my voice but a foreign growl, the sound of a wild animal.

  Stephen stared at his hands resting neatly on the bar.

  “Are you serious?” My voice shook so much it was barely audible.

  “Yes, Lucy.”

  I sensed the well of tears pressing behind my eyes, but I was too shocked to cry. None of this made a speck of sense. It was the most irrational thing I’d ever heard. I willed myself to speak. Calmly, reasonably.

  “Stephen,” I exhaled. “I understand that you are in law school and are swamped, but we can fix whatever isn’t working.”

  “No we can’t, Lucy.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I can’t do it, Lucy.”

  “Why?” The shock was slowly lifting and I began to feel out of control, on the edge of sanity. “Is this about your mom?”

  “What? No. Why would it be about my mom?”

  “I just—I mean I don’t understand—I don’t get it.” My words crashed into each other.

  “I don’t know, Lucy. Something isn’t right.”

  “Stop saying my name at the end of every fucking sentence. I don’t understand. Is this a joke?”

  “No.”

  I couldn’t look at him. I stared ahead and watched the bartender shake up a cocktail and pour it into a martini glass through the strainer.

  “I don’t understand,” I repeated. I felt so queasy I was almost seeing double.

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “Stephen,” I said, my voice hoarse. “We are finally in a place where we can make this work. We’ve been through too much of this crap. You can’t just give up like this.”

  “There’s something off,” he sighed. “I want something more.”

  “Something more? What the hell do you want? You owe me more than this.”

  “No I don’t, Lucy.” He stared at me apathetically, his mouth a neat line.

  I glared at him. I hated him. I wanted to punch him in his smug, average Joe face.

  “Two weeks ago you were acting like a different person.”

  “Things change.”

  “Not overnight. I—this is crazy. I don’t understand. Is this about the girl you went to dinner with?”

  “No. I told you that was nothing.” He frowned. “I’m sorry if I’m hurting you in some big way.”

  Hurting you in some big way.

  You are killing me. You are destroying the fibers of me.

  The bustling bar fell silent, the way it does in movies. I felt the hope I’d stowed up and stored burst within me, draining out of me as rapidly as blood from a deep wound. I would die, I knew. I would not go on. I would suffocate on my own breath. My own life would kill me.

  I lifted my eyes to his bottle-green orbs, flecks of chartreuse glowing in the irises. I would have to finish this. I would have to have something to tell everyone. There was a part of me on autopilot who knew this, and I heard her speak.

  “I hope you know that if you do this now, this is it,” I said. “This is really it, this time.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re acting like you don’t even care. After all this time. You act like I haven’t known you for four years.”

  “Do you really know me?” he snapped defensively, his eyes narrowing. “Do we really know each other?”

  “I guess you’re right,” I sputtered. “I really don’t know who the fuck you are. Two weeks ago you were telling me you loved me.”

  “Things change,” he repeated.

  “And you have no explanation for why?”

  “No.” His tone was clipped and curt. There was a trace of satisfaction in his voice, like he was glad to be inflicting this pain on me. Like I was a stupid, useless pawn. “Something about us together isn’t right. There’s something missing, and I can’t put my finger on it.” He motioned to the air between us with his hands. “We didn’t actually love each other, Lucy.”

  My mind spun like a torrential cyclone, a spiraling stream of thoughts I knew I wouldn’t be able to absorb until later. I bit the insides of my cheeks as hard as I could to keep from crying in front of him.

  “You’re so messed up.” I couldn’t look at him. “You’re twisted.”

  “You want to make me out to be evil, go ahead.”

  I glanced in front of me at my full vodka tonic, a limp orange slice hanging weakly off the glass rim. I hadn’t even asked for an orange. I hated him. I hated him in a way I hadn’t before. He wanted to hurt me. He lied and lied and he didn’t feel guilt. He was sadistic at his core. I had always known it. I was so, so stupid for thinking that our shared defiance of goodness was strong enough to equal love. There was always good in love. There had to be. But then maybe there wasn’t, and maybe that was the whole problem with the world.

  “I can’t stay here,” I said.

  “I understand.”

  But my body felt glued to the stool. I couldn’t leave. I loved him. I loved him more than anything. This had all gone terribly wrong. Stephen and I were supposed to order several rounds of drinks and sit at the bar for a few hours and work everything out. After a drink or two we’d shift closer to each other and interlace our fingers, and eventually we would start kissing, and the bartender would be jealous, and then we’d go back to Avenue B and have makeup sex all night.

  I could still fix it. There was time. He was here and I was here. If we both stayed at the bar, it wasn’t too late.

  But I looked into Stephen’s eyes again and they were like ice. There was nothing in them that wanted me to stay. There was no flirtation or lust or acknowledgment of a secret that only the two of us shared. I knew it was over forever this time.

  I forced myself to stand and move. I kept my eyes on the floor and walked out of the bar and only looked up when I was out on the street, lost in the crowded shuffle. Rowdy groups drifted in and out of bars on Orchard. Choppy salsa music played loudly from a restaurant. I didn’t know which direction I was walking, only that I had to keep moving. When I finally stopped I collapsed in on myself, the tears breaking loose, dry racking sobs heaving through my body. I was so sad I wanted to laugh. I thought of my freshman year English class with Mr. Levy, Intro to Shakespeare: all tragedies are comedies; all comedies are tragedies. All truth is a paradox.

  I took out my phone and called Bree. I hadn’t told her a thing about Stephen’s behavior over the past two weeks. I hadn’t told anybody. Her phone went to voice mail. I remembered that she had another date with Evan. People were out doing things, Friday-night things. I staggered down the street and passed faces that looked like clowns. Giant mouths opened wide as Frisbees and cackled in drunken laughter, staggering around me, their faces red, their hair like strands of yarn. It felt like a Tim Burton movie.

  I don’t remember hailing a cab but I must’ve, because that’s how I got home. Bree wasn’t at the apartment. I was still crying ferociously, salty tears dripping down my face and into my mouth. I felt like a hysterical child. I curled into a ball on my bed and sobbed into my
pillow. What I had been most afraid of had happened. I had spent the past two weeks in a state of debilitating worry for a reason.

  I cried so hard my nose started bleeding out of both nostrils. I could taste the blood before it hit the pillow and I covered my nose and ran to my dresser for tissues. I lay on my back on the wood floor and stuffed Kleenex up my nostrils. I swallowed snotty streams of blood and salt.

  The tears wouldn’t stop. I closed my eyes and let them run over my face. In the blackness behind my eyelids I saw Stephen’s eyes that first day on the Lake Mead houseboat freshman year, the way they’d promised me something uncharted. I felt his mouth on my neck in his bed at Slug. I saw his face light up when I opened the “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” poster on Carl’s boat. I heard him whisper in the dark, I love you, Lucy. I saw him in the doorway of my apartment holding groceries and wine. I tasted him in the outdoor shower in Westhampton. I felt his thick body curled around mine in the mornings.

  My heart hurt so much it scared me; it seared with pain behind my sternum. I don’t know how long I lay there on the floor but I must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing I remember was Bree shaking me awake.

  “What the hell happened?” she was shouting. There were bloody tissues all around me and there was blood on my shirt, and my eyes were so swollen from crying I could barely open them.

  “Evan’s not here, is he?” I whispered, already imagining Evan’s text to Stephen.

  “What? No. Why? What happened, Lucy?”

  My nose had stopped bleeding, and I propped myself up to stand, back in a living nightmare.

  Bree yanked me up when I tried to sit down on the bed. “You need to go to the bathroom, Lucy. You need to wash your face.”

  When I saw my reflection in the mirror I screamed out loud. I looked like I had been attacked. Bree held my hair back as I rinsed the dried blood and tears from my face, and I was suddenly filled with the memory of Macy Petersen holding my hair back that drunken night in high school, the last night of her life. I closed my eyes and let the water wash over my forehead, and suddenly I saw her, leaning against the wall of that bathroom, so many years ago but the memory still mysteriously clear. I’m just giving him a ride home, because I was babysitting nearby and he lives around here . . . . He’s no one you know. He’s this older guy, from Bayville.