Page 17 of The Lies You Love
I huff. “No, you’re just afraid of everything, Ramsey,” I counter. I want to add, for no good reason, but the truth is I think she may have reasons.
“I’m not.” Her words are clipped and I can tell she’s not going to say anything else on the matter. She closes off when I bring up her fear. “I have sex with strangers all the time. I’m not afraid of everyone.”
That’s the argument she always uses, and if I had a stronger backbone, I’d tell her the truth. That her affinity for sex with strangers might one day land her in a super scary situation. There’s something she doesn’t like to talk about that has to do with her past, but I never pry. It’s not worth risking the friendship. Whatever haunts her isn’t sex with men, that I know as fact. The collapse of the economy affected everyone in different ways. Some will pay the price for generations. There’s no telling exactly what Ramsey went through.
Unlocking my apartment, I rush in and set my bags down as she tells me about some rare houseplant she’s trying to locate on the internet. Plants and dudes. Ramsey in two words.
“Do you think you could check your sources?’
“Rams, pets are my business. Not houseplants. How am I going to find you a variegated monster or whatever?”
She sighs long and drawn out. “Monstera. Monstera Albo Borsingiana, fully rooted. I know you do pets, but you own a business, and don’t you communicate with other businesses? Can’t you just, I don’t know, put out your feelers?”
“Who do you think I am? The Mafia?” I open my fridge and see I need to shop for the same ingredients Hudson’s girlfriend requested. It’s empty. “Sorry, I can’t find the plant. Don’t you have enough anyway?”
“That’s the most offensive thing you’ve said all day, and you just admitted to giving a stranger a ride.”
Tipping the half-gallon jug of milk up, I chug down several gulps. Some people like water when they’re thirsty, I crave milk. Run a mile? Milk. Cookies? Also, milk. “How is that different than you having sex with that guy today in a restaurant bathroom?”
“There are always witnesses. You do know that’s why I do what I do where I do it.”
“Makes good sense, I guess.”
I pass by the round gold mirror hanging over my console and admire my reflection, but not for too long. Never for too long. The ghosts from my past live there. There are a few bills sitting next to a golden bowl that I grab and take to my bedroom. I open the window while I listen to Ramsey click on her laptop, searching for the damn plant.
“You should go over to his place,” she says randomly. “Like surprise him. Didn’t you leave this morning through his window? Could you get back in that way?”
I swallow hard. “I’m really tired,” I offer as an excuse. He hasn’t called me is on the tip of my tongue.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious about him and what could happen? I mean, you know Walker moved on.”
I close my eyes. “I don’t know that. You don’t either.”
“Oh,” she says, the clicking stops. Ramsey clears her throat.
I wince, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Do you know something that I don’t?”
“Well, I got back on social media a few weeks ago and didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to think it was because I bled the dating apps dry. Mostly, I just wanted to look some people up from my past.” Ramsey lowers her voice to a scary whisper when she speaks the last sentence.
Our phone connection spazzes for a second or two, like it did when all of the cell phone companies were struggling to keep up with demand after the stock market crash and the subsequent decimation of all financial structure.
“Tell me. Don’t make me get back on social media.”
Ramsey breathes for a few beats, and I know it’s bad. “Walker is married, Ramsey. Not only that, but he and his husband had triplets through a surrogate. Two boys and a girl.” More noisy breathing. “His husband is his business partner.”
While Ramsey came into my life after my breakup, she knows everything about Walker and the eventual demise.
“Mac was a derelict!” I nearly squeal. “He had a wife. He had kids. He was straight.” Even as I say it, I know I’m wrong. Nothing is ever as it truly seems.
“Sad, right? It seems they started a whole new life, devoid of everything from their former ones. Mac left his wife right after you and Walker broke up. He barely sees the kids. Well, he doesn’t post the kids that often anyway. I went down the rabbit hole so you didn’t have to. Walker is a fucking dick.”
No, he just likes dick, I think miserably.
Walker is a coward, and I was his comfort blanket for far too long. The sting hurts all the same, even now, when technically I’m over him and the relationship that was doomed from the word go. Walker has with Mac what I thought I’d have with him.
“I can’t say I’m shocked because it makes sense, but yeah, my heart is pounding right now.” Honesty is best in case I say something insane. With a palm to my chest, I go on, “They spent so much time together. It makes sense.”
Their start-up crashed and burned when the recession hit. It must be back on track now, or maybe there never was a start-up. So many lies alter my perception of the past.
