Page 41 of Hard to Pretend

It was time to face the music. I hit answer as I stepped inside my apartment building, only looking back once to steal a glance at Seb before the door closed. He was already walking back to his car. I knew that he’d have his own mess to clean up with his friend, the one who had spilled my secret, but that wasn’t my concern right now. My biggest concern right now was figuring things out with Luce and Mason.

I brought the phone to my ear. “Hey,” I greeted, trying to keep my tone casual.

“We need to talk.” Luce’s voice was blunt. Those who didn’t know her might have missed the anger andhurt layered into her words, but I could hear it clear as day. “We’re coming over.”

“We?”

“Me and River, Natalie and Ronnie, Mason,” she listed.

“No Vince?”

“He’s not involved in this.”

Because he wasn’t a long term partner. He hung out with the group when Mason invited him, but none of us hung out with him one-on-one. He didn’t have to bear witness to my shame or whatever anger my friends were going to throw my way. “I’m at home.”

“Yeah, Natalie told me she just dropped you off,” Luce answered bluntly. “We’ll be there in thirty.”

I had thirty minutes until my friends came and read me the riot act. I channeled my inner Seb and used that time to straighten my apartment. I didn’t want to think, because I would just play out every worst case scenario my mind could come up with. I would start to imagine life without my friends, withoutanyfriends. Seb would leave me, because he valued friendship and honesty and all of that. He’d think it was pathetic that I never told my friends the truth and that I’d lost them because of it. He probably already did.

I moved faster, picking up dirty clothes and everything else I found laying around on the floor. I straightened the cushions on my couch and positioned my remote neatly on the coffee table. Imade sure that all of my dirty dishes were returned to the kitchen. The entire time, worst case scenarios danced at the edge of my mind. The whole clean away your woes strategy may have worked for Seb, but it was not working for me.

But time moved regardless and soon, I heard the knock. I opened the door and found my friends there. Luce was in front, arms crossed over her chest. While the anger and betrayal was brightest in her eyes, I could see it reflected in every single eye I met.

Natalie’s expression hurt the worst. It wasn’t just anger and betrayal. I could see pain and distrust there. I might have known Mason the longest, but I was closest to Natalie. The tiny redhead had even asked me to walk her down the aisle when she and Ronnie got married the year before, in place of her own father who had died when she was younger.

I stepped aside and let them in.

No one said anything until they were all settled around my living room. Luce sat on the couch and River perched on the arm next to her. Natalie and Ronnie took the last two spots on the couch. Mason took the arm chair I’d bought when I got my first apartment in King’s Bay, and I was left standing. I could feel the weight of their stares, and I wondered who would start.

I probably should, but I was a coward and didn’t.

Luce finally broke the ice. “We know.”

“Seb told me.”

“Why didn’t you?” Mason asked. I forced myself to look at him, and then I looked away. “Why didn’tyoutell us? Why did you lie to us?”

“Because you guys kept giving me shit for being single,” I told him bluntly. “That day at the coffee shop, you were trying to set me up on another blind date. I didn’t want to go through that, and I just said the first thing that came into my mind. Then Seb walked in.”

“So you asked a stranger to pretend to be your boyfriend?” Mason asked incredulously.

“He wasn’t a complete stranger. I had met him before. Once.” A one night stand that I’d meant to contact back and never had. “He agreed to play along, and it was just supposed to be that one time. The next time you asked, I’d say we didn’t work out, and you’d never know.”

“But instead you brought him to my birthday party?” Luce spat out. “And then what?”

“Then we went to meet his mom.”

“Does she know?” Natalie interrupted.

“No. I don’t think she knows that it wasn’t real when we met, but it is now. I got to know him, and he’s amazing. He’s—”

“Stop,” Mason cut me off. “We’re not talking about the epic love story you have with your boyfriend. We’re talking about the fact that you lied to us. Repeatedly. You had so many chances to come clean,and you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized.

“That’s not enough,” River said softly. I looked over at them. They were barely looking at me. Their eyes were on Luce, on the way her shoulders were hunched and the expression on her face. “You lied to everyone. How do we even know it’s real now?”

“Beyond the fact that the guy at PITS said it was,” Mason pointed out. “How are we supposed to trust you?”

---