Page 3 of With This Lie

2

Lucas

“I think I love you,”she says.

I stare back at her blankly. I snap my black rubber band against my wrist twice. Maybe if I don’t move or acknowledge what she just whispered to me, it’ll just go away. Maybe she’ll say she was just kidding. Maybe she’ll run out the door without saying anything else and I’ll never see her again. Maybe if I wait long enough, I’ll wake up and realize this is all just a nightmare and we will go back to normal. But none of those things are happening. It’s not my luck. She is still staring at me and I am still silently staring back and fuck, this is about to get messy.

“But, baby, I told you it can’t be like that. I’m a married man, and I’m sorry but that’s not going to change,” I say.

I wait for her to slap me across the face and storm out, but she doesn’t. They rarely do. Though, if I were them, I would. Maybe they all want to in their heads but don’t have the courage to actually do it. She starts to cry and fuck, I knew this was going to happen. I rub her shoulder. It would be easier for both of us if she just slapped me. Anger is always an easier emotion to move through in these situations. Heartache is another beast entirely.

“I know. I know what you said but I just thought you should know and maybe it would change your mind,” she says.

Sometimes, I’m a real dirt bag. But my decision to pretend to be married was really for everyone’s sake. And I have to break it off with her now. We can’t go back to the way things were before she said it. We can’t erase this moment where it got too serious and pretend it didn’t happen. I get up from her bed and start to get dressed. She probably isn’t going to make this easy on me so I have to stay focused.

“Listen, Chelsea. We have fun. We do. I think you’re great. You know that. But I just can’t,” I say. I look around for my shirt and find it draped over her desk chair. I don’t remember how it got there last night but that’s typical of most nights with Chelsea. I pull it over my head and then start to spin my fake wedding band around my finger and give my rubber band two more snaps.

She watches me search for my socks. She has a look in her eyes. Something akin to desperation, but if I was being nice, I could call it hope. Chelsea is tapped. We both have to move on and I hope for her sake she lets me go without much of a fight.

She dries under her eyes and sits up. “This is goodbye, isn’t it?”

I drop my head down. God, I hate this part. She knows and I know and fuck me, why am I like this? It’s for her own good, I tell myself. But really, this is about me. This has always been about me. My self-preservation. She’d hurt me eventually, and there’s no way in hell I would let that happen to me again.

I kiss her on her forehead and tell her I’ll see her around. Even though I won’t.

I get out to the sidewalk and check my phone, finding a text from my brother, Elliott. I’ve been trying to get together with him to have drinks for a while now, regardless of the potential for a brawl. If I’m being real, I don’t like my brother. I mean I love him, but we don’t exactly see eye to eye on most things. That coupled with the fact that he’s basically half the reason I’m so guarded and he really starts to contend for brother of the year. Maybe it’s because we’re only half-brothers. Or maybe the fact that his dad always treated me like shit had something to do with it. But my mother loved him, so I always just dealt with it.

My younger brother is a spoiled shit. I text him back, asking for a time and an address.

I get in my car and pull into traffic. I’m always so exhausted after something like this happens. Admittedly, this sort of ordeal has become a regular happening in my life. Once every few months or so. When the woman I’m seeing starts to want more.

Then I have to start all over again. It’s getting old. I’m getting old. When I first started faking the whole being married thing, I thought eventually I would stop and maybe want to get back into dating with the purpose of settling down. That just hadn’t happened though. I still have zero interest in putting myself out there to become a bug on some woman’s windshield. I heard my heart go splat once and once is enough. No thank you to that torture.

I pull up to my apartment building and peer down the street. This section of the city is older but is being remodeled pretty quickly. I love the nuances of this area in Lexington. The streetlights are vintage, most buildings have exposed brick, and the streets even have cobblestone intersections. When people think about Kentucky, I’m sure they envision farmland and horses and that’s totally true. But inside the city, you can’t. I had secured this place long before the city started to take notice and “re-invent” it as a happening place, which meant I got it for a steal.

I check my mail on the way up and fortunately it’s all junk. No real news is good news. I slide my key into the door and hear my neighbor’s door open. I take a deep breath in preparation for what’s to come.

“Hi, Lucas doll! Where have you been? I’ve been so worried. I tried to bring you some food over but you didn’t answer your door. I was wondering if you could help me water my plants again?” she says.

Stella is a seventy-six-year-old widower whose grown children live out of state. The little woman stands no more than five-foot tall and honestly to say I think she’s lonely would be a lie. I know she is. She’s basically taken me in as her surrogate child, which is fine by me because both my parents are dead and Elliott’s father is no father to me.

“Hi, Stella,” I say. “I just spent a few days away. I’m okay, though. I can come water your plants in just a little while, if you still want?”

Most of the time, I’d make more small talk with her, tell a few jokes, really brighten up her day. But today, I just don’t have it in me. She agrees and finally lets me shuffle into my apartment.

The inside is stale. When I went to stay with Chelsea for a few days, I told her it was because my wife was on a business trip. In reality, I cut off my central air, turned off all the lights, locked up my empty apartment, and drove over to her place. There is no one to come home to, no one to check in with, no one to ask where I’ve been. It’s just me. Me and the trash I forgot to take out three days ago before I left. It now permeates throughout my small apartment and seeps deep into my nostrils as I approach the kitchen.

If ever you could call a place a “bachelor pad”, mine would be a prime example. I bag up the garbage as I survey my kitchen counters. There is only an electric can opener and a toaster. I only have two magnets on my fridge and one is a bottle opener. I lift the bag out of the can and notice the dirty dishes on the coffee table. Disgusting. It seems I was sloppier than usual before I left. I look over at my vinyl collection. At least there is one thing in here to be proud of. I do take care of it. Not for myself really, but because my mother would have wanted it that way. Hell, I never have to bring a date back here so it isn’t exactly like I’m concerned about the mess. So what if I leave the toilet seat up? So what if I don’t do the dishes for five days? So what if I trim my beard over the sink? It’s my place and no one is here to bitch at me for it.

The choices I’ve made probably don’t sound great when spoken of, but they do allow a certain kind of freedom. Not to mention all the fun and none of the hassle. Let’s face it. Society doesn’t exactly set you up for a win. Humans aren’t naturally monogamous. Like most animals, we crave the newness. And biologically speaking, there is some science behind “spreading your seed”. I learned these lessons the hard way. One broken heart later, and I’m not on the sidelines watching people play the game anymore. I’m more of an all-star quarterback now. Not that I love my position. It’s just how I survive.

I take the trash out and throw the bag over the edge of the dumpster and walk back inside. I think about sneaking back into my apartment without alerting Stella, but I don’t want to stand her up. I need to get over to water her plants now since I won’t be here later. I don’t want to be late meeting Elliott. He texts me the address for a place I’ve never been to—apparently a favorite of his—and I know I’ll need extra time to get there.

I stand in front of Stella’s door for a full six minutes before I take a deep breath and knock. I know if I’m lucky, I’ll be in and out of her place in about thirty minutes. The lady has a jungle’s worth of plants, but what could really hold me up is her incessant need to worry about me settling down with the right woman. A nice woman. She’ll ask me at least twice if I want kids and at least three times when I’m going to bring back a nice woman for her to meet. She’ll even offer—for the hundredth time—to set me up with her single granddaughter who “has a nice personality”, which I will politely reject again. She has never even shown me a photo, and that’s really all I need to know. If that labels me an asshole, then so be it.

It’s exhausting, dodging all these questions. It’s exhausting not having any new answers for her. Hell, I don’t tell Stella how I operate. I don’t tell most people how I operate. Maybe one or two people know and that is enough. The truth is, I’m not changing my ways any time soon. Probably ever. So I’ll just keep dealing with the questions and offers.

I check my phone while I wait for Stella to answer the door. I can hear her shuffling around inside. There is a text on my front screen from Chelsea. “I miss you already.” I don’t even open it. Not responding is the best course of action now. It sucks, but ghosting is necessary.

I’m an asshole. I know it.

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