Page 27 of The Liar's Reckoning

“Did you know I’d be here?” I ask, not so subtly alluding to the light stalking behavior.

“You were working when I got home last night, so I thought maybe.”

“Normally, I run five miles.”

“Oh.”

“So I guess if you’re gonna keep showing up like this, we need to get you up to my level.”

A small smile bends his rosy lips. “Go hard on me, then.”

Fuck him for saying that. Fuck him for flirting with me when he’s got nothing to back it up. I respond with, “All right, then, let’spush.”

He gives his beard a scratch and lopes into the park. I follow, setting the pace, not needing to have a front row seat to his ass jiggle.

“Do you not have any friends?” I ask.

“None I much care for,” he huffs, already working to breathe.

“You’re a strange guy, Graham.”

“How’s that?”

“I can’t decide if you’re really sheltered or if you’re on the spectrum or something—absolutely no offense intended with that.”

“I’ve never been diagnosed with anything,” he says.

“So you think you might be?”

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s not really typical to be as old as you are and not have had any meaningful relationships—even friendships if that’s accurate. It’s confusing.”

“I’ve just been focused on my other goals is all.”

“Is that really all?”

He doesn’t say anything for a few hundred yards, not until my watch beeps and tells us to slow to a walk. “I don’t know why I never wanted a relationship. My family’s transactional. Everything is about what mutual benefit can be derived from alliances—not so much what spot in your heart needs to be filled.”

“But when you were a kid…”

“When I was a kid, I was either at Catholic school or church. Or I was being displayed like a prop for my family.”

“Hold on. Back it up—at school—that’s where people usually make friends.”

“That’s not what I was told,” he says quickly, now that his breathing has settled back into something more sustainable. “I was told my grades were the only thing that mattered—that knowledge was power, and I was there to learn, not play.”

“Okay—but what about your teenage rebel years? What aboutwhen most kids turn to other kids to learn how to live and how to belong?”

“Yeah, well, those weren’t good years for me.”

I sit with that a moment and hazard a glance at him, but he’s still impossible to read behind the sunglasses. There’s a tight set to his jaw and a tension at the corner of his mouth. I want to stop him and ask him to explain, but my watch beeps again for another five minute run.

I get lucky, though. He doesn’t let that stop him.

10

GRAHAM

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