Two Little Lies

by Rhonda Helms

  “Trust me, Kyle,” I whispered and stepped toward him, my own heart throbbing, my hands shaking. Inches separated our faces. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. At least not on purpose.” I swallowed. “I’m falling in love with you. Can’t you see?”

  He swallowed, blinked. I saw a vein at the side of his temple throb.

  Time stretched out in tense silence. He reached his hands up until they were almost touching my face then dropped them. His eyes flashed with a pain that stabbed me in the heart. “I…can’t. I’m sorry, Natalie. I gotta go.”

  Then he slipped away from me, grabbed his coat and left my apartment without looking back. The sound of the door clicking shut filled my ears, echoed in my head.

  My throat was so tight I could barely swallow. I dragged in several breaths through my nose, willed myself to not cry. This deep, savage pain in my chest ate away at me until hot tears streamed from my eyes, and I couldn’t fight back the sob.

  I clapped my hand over my mouth, but the cries kept coming.

  He left.

  I’d laid everything out there, asked him to trust me, and he couldn’t. Despite the weeks we’d spent together, growing close, sharing ourselves. Despite the nights we’d made love, had fallen asleep in each other’s arms.

  I wanted to be angry, wanted to scream. I’d been a fool for believing I could go into this situation with Kyle without getting my heart hurt. This agony in me wasn’t his fault, it was mine. He was right; he’d told me from the start, but stupid me, in the deep recesses of my heart, I thought he’d change his mind.

  I thought I’d be worth the risk.

  With a spreading numbness filling my chest, I scraped our full plates into the garbage. Washed dishes. Took a shower. Got dressed. My heart was hurting so badly it was like I’d lost the capacity to feel anything else. Like the emotion had taken over everything and shut me down. A circuitry overload.

  I managed to shuffle through my day. Went to the grocery store and filled up my cart. I went to reach for those little oranges Kyle liked but stopped myself from doing it. Funny how he’d integrated himself into my world, my life, so easily. How doing those small things for him was ingrained now.

  After unloading groceries and spending a bit of time cleaning house to distract my hollowed-out brain, I went to work the evening shift. It dragged on and on. I came home, fell into bed and cried myself to sleep like a girl with a broken heart.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A knock on my door stirred me out of the listless nap I’d been taking on my couch. I stood and answered without bothering to look through the peephole.

  There stood Bianca and Anna, both clad in winter gear, both staring at me with concerned looks on their faces.

  “Girl, you’re a mess,” Bianca declared as she let herself into my apartment. “When’s the last time you changed your clothes?”

  A heated flush burst out on my face. “Yesterday,” I said. “I just fell asleep.” Totally not the reason why I looked so awful. But it was hard to sleep well when I couldn’t stop thinking about Kyle, angsting over what had happened between us.

  It had been a week of silence. I’d been too stubborn to reach out to him and demand he talk to me. So I was equal parts fear and anger and misery. My breakup with West hadn’t gutted me like this. It was mortifying, which was why I was holing up in my apartment, sending the girls occasional texts so they wouldn’t know I was wallowing in self-pity so hardcore.

  Secret was out now though.

  Anna closed the door behind her and eyed me. She didn’t say a word, just gave me a hug.

  My emotions clogged in my throat and I clung to her. “I’m sorry I’ve been MIA,” I said. “This is so not like me.” I pulled back and sniffled, wiped my hand under my nose. “I’m not having the best week.”

  Bianca punched me in the shoulder, and the flash of pain made me grimace. “You need to get out of here, hon. We’ll have lunch, go flea market shopping… You know you’ll love it.”

  I had to admit that it was tempting. I wasn’t scheduled to work today, which was why I’d just been lying on the couch like a bum, watching crappy daytime TV. Trying to not think about Kyle. Pissing myself off because he wouldn’t get out of my head.

  “I think I screwed everything up,” I admitted to them. “I pushed him too far because I wanted more from us instead of letting it just happen naturally.” I played with the hem of my T-shirt.

  Bianca brushed the hair off my brow. Her eyes were kind and empathetic. “Let’s get out of the apartment and talk about this more, okay? We’ll figure it all out.”

  I nodded. They sat on the couch while I showered then grabbed a pair of light blue jeans and my favorite white sweater. A half hour later, we were in Anna’s new car, bounding down the highway toward Columbus.

  When Bianca and I wanted a day out of town for shopping and shenanigans, we went there. Lots of restaurants, bookstores, malls, boutiques. This was Anna’s first time coming with us since she’d moved back to Edgewood Falls. The drive was easy, and as each mile passed, I felt some of the tension slip from my muscles.

  Thank God for my friends. They knew what I needed, even when I didn’t. Sitting in that apartment was just going to make me feel worse. And I’d never been one to get all melodramatic like this.

  We pulled into the flea market’s parking lot. Got out and headed into the massive building. Anna gasped as she saw rows upon rows of vendors, all hawking their wares.

  “This is heaven,” she breathed. “Look at the jewelry stand right there. And that woman has nothing but scarves.”

  I laughed for the first time in days. “Just wait until you see the Amish fudge stands,” I told her.

  We wandered down the aisles, smelling homemade soaps and trying lotions. Nibbling samples of fudge and cheese. Debating between scarf colors. It was so refreshing to not be wrapped up in my head for a little while.

  When we passed a stand that had necklaces, I paused, eyed it. Kyle had suggested a couple of times that I try to sell my jewelry. Could I really make any money at it? That low, dull ache in my chest throbbed when I thought of him, and I couldn’t shove it away easily. Why did he have to be so…so amazing and so awful at the same time?

  “You should do a stand like this,” Bianca suggested as she touched one of the long, draping necklaces. She kept her voice low since the vendor was a few feet away talking to another customer. “Your necklaces are just as good as this, if not better.”

  “I was just thinking about that,” I told her.

  Anna flicked her hair back to show her pearl-drop earrings to me, the ones I’d made for Christmas. “I wear ‘em all the time and I get a lot of compliments on them.”

  The pride in her eyes made mine tear up for some stupid reason, and a curtain of water obscured my vision.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Anna said in a guilt-tinged voice. “I didn’t mean to make you upset. I just wanted you to know that people love your stuff.”

  I blinked and swiped at the tracks of tears down my cheeks, giving a self-conscious sniffle. “No, no, it’s not your fault. I’m overly emotional lately.”

  Bianca put the necklace back then walked away. A couple of minutes later, she returned with three huge squares of fudge. “We’re going to sit down over there and talk this out,” she declared with a nod of her head toward the side of the building, which had tables set up.

  I nodded, and we followed her. The three of us sat down, and as we dug into our fudge, I spilled the beans about everything, from our increasingly romantic dates to our fight last week. They remained silent, letting me get it all off my chest.

  “I’m torn,” I said as I ate my last bite of fudge. It was thick and delicious but hadn’t satisfied that ache in my heart. Still, I appreciated the gesture. “I don’t know what to do. It’s obvious he’s afraid of commitment.”

  “Totally,” Bianca said with a head nod.

  “So I’m giving him his space. But…what if that means he’ll never contact me again? Was that the
end for us, or did he just need to pull back into his ‘man cave’ and get some perspective? I just don’t know.” I rested my elbow on the table and dropped my chin in my hand.

  “You have options,” Bianca said as she closed her eyes to savor her last bite. “Holy hell, that fudge is better than sex. No wonder the Amish seem so happy all the time.”

  Anna barked out a laugh.

  “Anyway. I got distracted. Here’s a possibility on how to get him talking to you. Go to a lingerie store and buy the tiniest piece of fabric you can get. Something with lots of lace and see-through parts. Preferably with strategic cutouts too. Then put an overcoat on and show up on his doorstep. He won’t be able to ignore you then.”

  Yeah, that might work. Sex was what had gotten us here in the first place, true, but now I wanted something more lasting. I didn’t want to just be his booty call or a casual date.

  “Okay, what are you willing to settle for to be with him?” she asked me point blank. “Is what he’s offering right now enough to make you happy?” She sighed and shot me a sad smile. “I know you care about this guy, and I do too. You’ve been happier in the last few weeks than I’ve seen you in ages, which makes my heart happy in return. But if he says he isn’t ready for a relationship, you can’t force it. You can accept what he’s giving you or tell him it just isn’t enough.”

  “Yeah, I know you’re right,” I said with a groan. I fidgeted with the end of my ponytail. Now that I knew Kyle, had grown closer to him, I wanted us to have the chance at falling in love, being together. Which put the two of us at total odds. “Ugh. There’s nothing I can do about this, is there?”

  “I think you shouldn’t go to him,” Anna said. Half of her fudge was still sitting on the table because she’d been staring at us and listening while we talked. “He’s the one who left, so he should be the one to reach out to you.”

  “Ballsy.” Bianca nodded in admiration at the girl. “That takes guts.”

  A woman with three loud, screeching kids sat down at the table behind me. She shot us an apologetic glance then handed the kids corn dogs. They quieted instantly as they chewed on the food.

  Bianca shot me a wicked wink. “Nothing shuts me up like shoving a hunk of meat in my—”

  “Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” I chastised her, and she cackled. I turned my attention back to Anna, who was fighting hard to not burst into loud laughter. “Anyway, what were you saying?”

  Her lips quirked as she settled down. “Okay, here’s how I view it. You put it all out there during your last conversation, right? You called his bluff. He told you he didn’t want a relationship, but I don’t think that’s true. Not in the deepest part of his heart. He’s just too scared to be in one, and it made it safer for him to venture into it with you by saying it was casual, no commitment. But he needs to face the truth—you guys were in one, whether you labeled it that way or not.”

  “Oh yeah. That’s what I said before,” Bianca chimed in. “Kyle can pretend it’s just casual, but he knows it’s more than that.”

  “If he didn’t have feelings for you, he wouldn’t have freaked out the way he did,” Anna continued. “He just would have said, ‘Nope,’ and been on his merry way. So I think you should do nothing. Leave him to stew in his juices for a while, so to speak. Let him feel how much it hurts to miss you—because I guarantee, he does miss you. No guy looks at a girl the way he looked at you without having romantic feelings. Yeah, we weren’t around you guys as a couple a lot, but the few times we were, I could practically smell the sexual tension.”

  Bianca laughed and bumped Anna’s shoulder. “I think I’m rubbing off on you.”

  “So…basically you think I need to give Kyle time to figure out if he has the balls to be in a relationship with me.” It was calculated, and patience wasn’t exactly my forte.

  “Think of it this way. For a good chunk of your life, you have a certain belief—that people are inherently bad. That people cheat and lie and hurt each other. And everything you see has reinforced it so far. Then you meet a woman who scares the hell out of you because she makes you want to change how you think, how you feel. We’re talking big life decisions here. They take time. They don’t happen quickly. You gotta give him that time so it’s his own decision. Those things can’t be forced.”

  Hm. Fair point. I paused, let her words sink in. “When did you get so smart about love?” I asked. I wished I had perspective like that. Instead, I’d been too busy drowning in my own hurt to view it from his angle. A maelstrom of emotions flooded me.

  “Please,” she scoffed. “I’m just an outsider looking in. How much did you guys help me when I was torn up over Steven? Wondering what to do about my attraction for Gavin?”

  “I admit I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to love,” Bianca said, and the genuineness in her voice made me pause. “Maybe that’s why I empathize with Kyle.” She chewed on the corner of her thumbnail. “But that isn’t the best attitude, and in this case, I think Anna might be right. Kyle needs to wake up, and he has to do it for himself.”

  “There’s always the risk he’ll decide I’m not worth it,” I make myself say out loud.

  Anna gathered our garbage and dumped it, and we stood, made our way down a nearby aisle to check out homemade quilted blankets.

  Bianca leaned toward me and said quietly, “You’re worth the risk. And if he doesn’t see that, it’s his loss. Don’t forget it. And don’t put your life on hold while waiting for him to make up his mind. You gotta live for you, not for him.”

  She was right. I looped one arm through hers and the other through Anna’s, and we skipped through the wide aisle.

  I was worth the risk. I was a good person. Sure, I made mistakes—and I’d probably pushed him too fast. But if Kyle was going to like me, he had to like all of me. Including the part that believed in commitment.

  I wasn’t going to let this make me feel bad about myself anymore. It had been hard, scary, telling him how I felt, knowing I might never get it in return. But that was love, right? It was selfless, giving. Not taking.

  “This hat is darling,” Anna cooed as she disentangled herself from my grip and darted to a table on the right. She propped the floppy white hat on her head and beamed at us. “What do you think? Very twenties, right? Should I splurge?”

  “I think you should do what makes you happy,” I replied with a smile. My heart was still feeling a bit beat up, a bit tender from missing Kyle, but Anna was right. This was in his hands now. It was hard and scary, letting it go, giving up control. But for my sanity, I had to.

  I found a small pink knitted cap and plopped it on my head. “What do you think?”

  Bianca nodded as she donned a massively ornate cowboy hat. “Ladies, I think it’s time to get our shopping on.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  My feet throbbed. I kissed Anna and Bianca on the cheeks as I stepped into my apartment. “You guys are the best. Thank you for dragging me out.” In my hands were a couple of hefty shopping bags. I’d probably spent more than I should have, but it was worth it. I’d gotten a bag of skeleton keys, plus a few more chains and beads for jewelry making.

  Wandering from table to table, I’d decided I was going to do it. Instead of throwing a pity party for one while waiting this situation out, I was going to focus on jewelry. Anna had gotten that job at the boutique, and she said that the owner was looking to consign more designers.

  It was a good chance to see how I’d do out there.

  A risk. I was taking a number of them lately, it seemed.

  Bianca beamed at me. “I’m heading out to Tino’s to grab a drink. If you get bored and wanna meet me there later, send me a text.”

  “I’m exhausted, but thanks. I’m just gonna curl up in a hot bath and read for a while before going to bed.”

  “That sounds divine,” Anna said with a blissful sigh. “I’m gonna copy your idea.”

  Bianca and Anna left, and I closed the door and dropped my bags on the couch. Kic
ked off my snow boots and stretched my aching arches. It was early evening, but I was flat-out tired. All that talking and girl connecting and shopping had drained the energy from me.

  I soaked in a long bubble bath and picked up the romance novel Anna had gotten me for Christmas. I felt my heart clench and swoon when I reached the climactic ending, where the hero chased her into the airport to keep her from boarding her plane. He told her that he couldn’t live without her, that she made his life happy. Complete.

  It was so ridiculous of me to be jealous of a fictional character, but I couldn’t help it. Kyle was always on the fringes of my mind, even when I tried to keep him out of there. I put the book down, drained the tub and dried off. At least he’d be happy for me, knowing I was going to do more with jewelry making.

  I fought off the melancholy that crept into my heart. I needed to stop thinking about Kyle so much. I was just gonna keep feeling crappy if I did. Like touching a sore tooth with your tongue—it brought you pain but you couldn’t stop prodding it. Seeing if it still hurts.

  Yup, it still hurt.

  I slipped into my favorite pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt then stretched out on the couch and turned on TV. Wrapped my softest blanket around me and propped my head on the pillow.

  My doorbell rang, and I blinked myself awake. Whoops, I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I clicked the TV off, got up, walked on my fuzzy socks to the door and peeked in the eyehole.

  The oxygen whooshed out of my lungs in a rough exhale. Kyle’s face greeted me.

  Another ring of the doorbell.

  What was he doing here?

  I steadied my hands and opened the door. “Hey,” I said in a light but wary tone.

  “Hey.” He eyed me with a cautious look, and I saw dark smudges under his eyes. His face was scruffy, like he hadn’t shaved in days, and his shirt was rumpled. My heart squeezed in sympathy. He was a bit rough around the edges. I’d never seen him like this before.