Page 40 of Pretend You're Mine
Already, his face was rain-drenched, his eyes standing out bluer in his wet face.
“Maybe,” I said. “I just couldn’t go on lying to them anymore.”
“Ok,” Teren said, clearly not getting it. “But then you just leave like that?”
“What, do they want me back?”
Teren tch-ed in annoyance. “They started talking about the sermon from earlier today.”
I had to smile bitterly at that. That sounded like Mom and Dad all right. Just sweep anything untoward under the rug.
“I’m sorry for not saying anything either,” he said, “When you just blurted it out like that, with no warning, I thought I was going to choke on my chicken. What are you going to do now?” Teren asked. “Want me to bring over Legally Blonde?”
“I’ll be fine. Anyway, you have another …” I glanced at my phone time. “An hour to go, at least.”
“Don’t remind me,” Teren moaned.
“Cry me a river,” I said, “At least you’re in Mom and Dad’s good graces.”
“For now, at least,” Teren said. “You were smart to leave before Dad delivered one of his ‘heart’ talks.”
I couldn’t even smile at that.
“What about tomorrow then?” Teren said. “After work I can bring over some sangria and we can crack into Friends?”
“Teren, I’m a grown-ass woman. You don’t have to baby me. Although yes, Friends sometime would be good,” I said.
“Ok, fine,” he said. “But if you need anything, you’ll tell me?”
“You know it,” I said. “Anyway, I better go. Last thing I want is Mom and Dad to peer out of the front door and see me sitting here in my car.”
“You’re probably right,” Teren said. “You should’ve seen how shell-shocked they looked once you walked out the door.”
No regrets missing that. Just seeing how stupefied my words had made them was bad enough.
“And Naomi?” Teren said.
“Yeah?”
“I know this thing with Xander’s getting in deeper than you ever thought. Just… Be careful.”
Another well-intentioned thing, which I couldn’t for the life of me find a proper response for.
So, I just said ‘goodbye’ and he said it back, and he walked back to the house.
After I got in the car, I didn’t call Xander. I didn’t call him on the long drive home, with the traffic lights so infuriatingly long it almost made me think that they were broken.
I didn’t call him as I pulled up into my apartment parking lot, when my first instinct was to stay in the car and cry.
I didn’t call him on the walk all the way up to the building, punctuated by a blissful couple who’d somehow known this would be the perfect time to make out in the middle of the sidewalk.
I didn’t call him on the elevator ride up, which seemed to stop on every floor to deliver and drop off passengers who all seemed in on this plan to torment me.
I didn’t call him for those first few seconds when the door slammed in the way it did behind me, and the suffocating emptiness of my apartment settled over me.
I didn’t call him when I scrolled through our conversations on my phone, reading the texts from that first horrible one, to one more recent.
I didn’t call him when my finger hovered over the dial button.
But I did answer when he called me.
“Hello?”
“What’s wrong?” he said immediately, sensing something in my voice.
I swallowed. What would it be; the truth or another lie?
“Naomi,” he said, sounding endearingly alarmed.
“I told them,” I said. “I told my parents the truth about us. Hate me if you have to. But I told them. I’m sorry.”
A pause long enough to convince me he hated me, but instead he said, “I’m coming over now.”
20
Xander
When I saw her … I didn’t let myself finish that sentence.
If I let myself think it, then it would definitely happen. And I didn’t want it to happen.
Right then, I just wanted to be there for her.
While my car crawled to Naomi’s, I played the ‘why did Naomi tell her parents’ game. By the time I was in her building and she’d buzzed me in, and I was knocking on her door, my mind had come up with the following options; to piss me off, to test me, or because the weight of carrying around the lie had grown too burdensome.
And then she opened the door, and the only thing I was thinking about was how, right then, her wispy smile looked worse than a frown.
“You came,” she said.
“Of course I did. I said I was coming, didn’t I?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
I stepped inside, and the door slammed loudly behind me as I wrapped her in my arms.
“So, you really did it then.”
Her limbs felt like piping; all tensed and primed.
“I did.” She pulled away, her face already wearing the words she was about to say. “I’m tired of all the lies. And my parents didn’t deserve that.”
