Lie to Me Read online

  I am transfixed, and for a second I’m falling for it. Completely. Because I want to believe that Marcus Roma will give me what I need, in every possible way. I want to believe that this feeling will leave me one day, that I’ll be free of both loving and hating him, that I won’t crave his touch like this. That I’ll be able to forget the things he put me through, the things that happened to me, after he left. That I’ll move on.

  I really need to believe that.

  “Fine,” I choke back. I take my hand from his, needing a clear head. “But that won’t be good enough, Marcus.”

  “Ok,” he says with a grin. “I’ll work on getting good enough.”

  Where have I heard that before? I look at him quizzically, but he just smiles that newly enigmatic smile, and resumes walking toward busy Bedford Avenue.

  I have freaking whiplash.

  “So what do we have planned for today?” he asks.

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “How did Brison Wolfe know me by sight?”

  Marcus’s expression hardens. I would regret bringing it up, except for the fact that I just realized that even though I didn’t introduce myself to Brison he knew my name, and it creeps me out.

  “That’s a good question, Lo,” Marcus says. “I would have to say it has something to do with the way you’re holding out on that offer for your house.”

  I stop. “What exactly do you do for Alex Wolfe?”

  Marcus exhales. “I’m a fixer.”

  “Is that what it sounds like? You fix problems?”

  “Yes.”

  “Problems like me?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “So you want me to sell my house?” I demand. I’m so enraged by this idea I don’t even know where to start. I mean, I knew he worked for Alex Wolfe, and I have to assume Wolfe has money in this development deal, otherwise he wouldn’t care about it one way or the other. But some part of me kind of thought that Marcus would rebel against the whole thing somehow.

  I also expect Marcus to be mad about this accusation. He’s not. He just looks at me with a kind of sad expression.

  “Yeah, I want you to sell, Lo.”

  “Well, I’m not going to.”

  “But you will, Lo,” he says. “I just want it to be your choice when you do.”

  I start. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might fight and lose. Fighting is what I do. It’s what we do, Marcus and I. And he doesn’t think I can win.

  I don’t have anything to say to that. Mostly because it makes me feel alone in a whole new way.

  “You asked what we were doing today?” I say, starting to walk toward Shantha’s bar. “Today we are figuring out how to stop this development so that everybody stops bothering me about my house. Or I am, anyway. You are tagging along.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Marcus shaking his head, but he’s walking beside me now, coming with me. The more we walk in silence, the angrier I get. How dare he think I’m going to have to sell my house? He has no right. He hasn’t been here. He has no idea how important it is to Dill and me.

  It’s only a few blocks to The Alley, and by the time we get there I am steaming, partially because it’s easier to be angry than to have to constantly fight my very complicated feelings about Marcus. I practically slam into the door of The Alley, refusing to look at him as he stands behind me.

  Shantha opens the door with her incredulous face on. “There a reason you’re banging on my door before we open, honey?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I have an idea I want to bounce off of you.”

  Shantha opens the door in the full light of day and I look nervously back at Marcus to see how he’ll react. I figured in the bar the other night it was dark, and Marcus was mostly focused on me. But now he’s looking right at Shantha and I’m wondering if he can tell. I’m wondering if it will matter if he can tell. I wonder if getting over him will be easier on me if he turns out to be really awful to my best friend just because she happens to be transgender. I mean, you never know. People have reactions.

  Marcus just waves.

  “What about him?” Shantha asks, smiling at me way too suggestively. She recognizes Marcus from the other night, though she doesn’t know who he is. Yet. “You been bouncing ideas off him?”

  I can hear Marcus stifle a laugh.

  He wouldn’t laugh if he knew how much Shantha wanted me to start dating again. Or if he knew the reason why she thinks I don’t.

  “Not like that,” I say with perhaps a bit too much vehemence. “I will explain inside.”

  “Sure. You want a drink, honey?” Shantha says to Marcus, and shows him inside.

  I hate that I hear Marcus apologize to Shantha for me. Like I’m the jerk in this situation. And I hate that, for the first time in years, walking into this bar has triggered my anxiety. I hate that I have to sit down, and fight off a sudden panic attack while Shantha chats with Marcus at the bar.

  There’s a reason for that.

  This is the place where I met Shantha, more than four years ago. We got very close very quickly, for very bad reasons. We met because Shantha was the one who saved me.

  It’s not something I like to talk about for obvious reasons. And for the most part, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I think I have done a good job at dealing with it, even if I haven’t really wanted to date much—I mean, there are a lot of reasons that I haven’t been interested in relationships. But Marcus being here, in this place…it’s messing with me.

  After I realized Marcus wasn’t coming back, or maybe just to spite him, I don’t fucking know why I did it, but for a little while, I hooked up with guys kind of randomly. I made a few poor decisions, right before I got my life together for Dill. Sometimes I think I was just looking for someone, anyone, to fill Marcus’s place, but when I put it like that it’s so obviously laughable, isn’t it? As though anyone could ever take Marcus’s place.

  So maybe I was just trying to dull the pain. Maybe I just had to keep doing things that confirmed that I was, in fact, just as worthless as Marcus made me feel when he left. I don’t know.

  Anyway. I got involved with some questionable guys. And one really bad one.

  I think, all things considered, I was actually lucky. I mean, in an ideal world, no woman should have to be afraid that a man will force her to do something she doesn’t want to do just because he can, because she’s drunk, because there’s no one else around. But we don’t live in an ideal world.

  His name was Dylan.

  I’d met up with him a few times at bars, gotten drunk. I hadn’t gone home with him—and I wasn’t going to—because he didn’t do it for me, but he was just awful enough, just angry enough, with his unwashed hipster hair and this sneer he always had going, like one of those guys who’d been uncool his whole life and then moved to New York and got a new wardrobe but never got rid of the chip on his shoulder, that I think he scratched that self-destructive itch. That place where the wound Marcus had left me with had started to scab over, where it somehow felt satisfying to scratch at it, to make myself feel worthless all over again—Dylan was perfect for that.

  I mean, I wasn’t kidding: these were some seriously poor decisions. Marcus messed me up pretty badly. Almost worse, in some ways, than my parents dying, because that at least wasn’t personal. That was just life screwing me and my family over. Marcus? Marcus left me. It was as personal as you could get.

  I really, really, really did not handle it well. So, besides being constantly drunk, there were guys like Dylan. Not too many, thank God, before Dylan himself scared me into getting myself together, but it’s not a period of my life I like to think about. I mean, I think sex is awesome, generally, but I have a problem with sleeping around out of self-loathing, you know?

  I’m ashamed of it. I’m ashamed that I was that weak.

  And even though I know it’s not my fault, I’m ashamed of what happened.

  So one night I met up with Dylan at The Alley, just after Shantha had b
ought it and had everything redone. I was getting pretty drunk, I guess, on lots of shots of whiskey—a liquor I can’t stand now—and I remember being kind of mean to Dylan, and I remember him getting aggressive back, just because I wasn’t being flirtatious. It must have seemed so fucked up to anyone who was watching—and thank God Shantha was watching.

  Because when I got up to go to the bathroom, Dylan followed me.

  I really don’t like to think about it, but I will be damned if I’m afraid to remember. I’m not going to let him have that power over me.

  I didn’t hear him come in.

  I saw him in the mirror, and it was this moment of confusion, like, is this right? Can this be right? And then there was just the shock of his hands suddenly on me.

  There was the smell of his whiskey breath as he forced me up against the wall. There was the way twisted my wrist until I cried out in pain. There were the things he said, how he called me a bitch and a slut as he fumbled with my jeans. He was angry. I remember that, most of all, how angry and hateful he was. I remember how he wanted to rape me because he was angry with me.

  And I remember not being able to fight him off.

  I remember thinking, I can’t believe this is happening. This is really happening.

  I remember begging.

  I remember how my mind started to drift away, like it was separate from my body, like whatever part of me could escape was determined to do so. I remember going slack at one point, after struggling so hard that I sprained my left wrist, that there were bruises all over me. I just went slack. Like if I stopped it would somehow cancel everything out. Like somehow if I wasn’t fighting, this wasn’t really happening.

  I still don’t understand that. I still can’t think about that without…I don’t even know. It makes me feel ashamed, yeah, but also frightened and confused, because I just cannot understand what my own body did. I was always a fighter. I was supposed to be a fighter.

  And I remember Shantha pounding on the door. She told me I screamed, but I don’t know. I just remember she unlocked the door—the bastard had locked the bathroom door—and busted in full of rage. Dylan let go of me like I was suddenly hot to the touch, like that would change what he had tried to do, and in a rush the world came back to me. My mind came back and my body hurt and I went from being dead inside to terrified and angry. I immediately started crying out of pure, incandescent rage.

  Shantha tried to hold him, screaming about calling the police, but Dylan shoved her into the sink and ran. That was the last I ever saw of him. The last thing I wanted to do was get the police involved; I didn’t trust them, and I wanted to get Dill, and above all, I just wanted to forget about it. And after that? It’s somewhat of a blur. Mostly I remember Shantha, taking care of me, doing all the right things. I remember shaking, like, watching my hand shake uncontrollably while I said that I was ok.

  So Shantha and I met in kind of a weird way. I mean, underage girl in bar gets drunk and then someone tries to rape her—not ideal from the proprietor’s point of view. But the thing about Shantha is that she can see through almost anyone’s defenses. She has this almost unerring ability to see when people are in need. I think it comes from all those years she spent in the closet, hiding herself—she got good at recognizing when anyone hid their hurt. She saw right through me, that’s for sure.

  And she offered me a job. Like, to keep me out of trouble. To try to be a good influence on my life. She helped out with Dill when I finally got custody. In a very real way, Shantha stepped in and saved me, all over again.

  So, when I come here, now, that is what I’ve trained myself to think about. I think about Shantha coming into my life, I think about Shantha showing me just endless patience and compassion, I think about this being the first place I learned how to have fun again, because of her. I don’t think about that night. I don’t think about Dylan, even though I still won’t use that bathroom.

  And even though this is one of the reasons I don’t really date. It was already hard enough for me to feel safe in the world after Marcus left, and then Dylan happened. I haven’t felt truly safe since.

  And I haven’t really been able to feel that way about a guy since Marcus, anyway, even though I’ve tried. I haven’t even wanted anyone until Marcus came back, because the only man I’ve ever really wanted is him. Which is why I’m so off balance, and Shantha is so excited to see me with a guy, and why I’m inevitably thinking about the night some asshole tried to rape me.

  That’s why Marcus being here messes me up so much. It’s like two worlds colliding all over again. Marcus reminds me of how bad things got after he left, and of what almost happened here. And while I don’t blame him for it, but I can’t help feeling angry.

  Or maybe I’m just looking for reasons to be mad at him. More reasons, I mean.

  My head is all over the place right now.

  “So what’s your idea?” Marcus says walking back over to me. He flips a chair off of one of the tables and straddling it in one smooth motion.

  I stare at him.

  “You think I’m going to tell you?” I say.

  “Come on, I won’t spill,” he says, grinning. “I promise.”

  He thinks I’m teasing. Somehow that’s more insulting than an actual insult, like he doesn’t take me or my feelings seriously. I take all that anger I’ve been stewing on the whole walk over here—or maybe I take all five years’ worth—and hone it down into one phrase.

  “And what exactly is a promise from you worth, Marcus?”

  I swear I can feel the temperature in the room drop. Shantha backs off without a word, finding something to do in the office with the door cracked open. Marcus meets my eyes, unflinching. He’s taken his jacket off, and now he folds those thick, corded arms over the back of the chair and leans forward, his expression serious.

  “Lie to me, Lo, and tell me it’s a lot,” he says.

  The second time. That’s the second time he’s said that to me. Knowing what it means. Knowing why I used to ask him to do that. There’s a crackling feeling around me while I stare at him, like the charge between us just doubled and it’s inexorably drawing me to him, even while I’m furious with him. That phrase did what it was supposed to: it reminded me of us, of everything, of the intimacy we will always have. Of those private moments I shared with him that I can never take back. Of how I want to tell him about the bad things that happened to me when he wasn’t here, how I want him to comfort me.

  It reminds me that I love him and makes me hate him even more.

  “Stop saying that,” I whisper. “You don’t get to say that to me anymore.”

  Marcus stands up suddenly, toppling the chair. He doesn’t come closer, though I can see him struggling. Part of me wants him to come closer.

  “The hell I don’t,” he says.

  “It’s so shitty of you,” I say. “Why would you do that? Why would you make me think about all that? Why would you make me think about how I used to need you? Is it just to humiliate me?”

  “No,” he says, angry. “It’s because maybe now I need something from you.”

  We both seem surprised at that.

  Marcus Roma, needing something from me?

  His mind works faster than mine, gets there before I figure out how pissed off I am. He says, “Wait, Lo. I’m not saying you owe me anything. I’m saying I need you. There’s a difference.”

  That shuts me up. And melts me.

  I mean, actually melts me. I lean on a table for support, unable to take my eyes off him, feeling my knees turn to jelly. Five years ago this wouldn’t have been such an affecting statement. Five years ago I helped Marcus after his own father died, when we were already so close that we hardly had to speak to communicate, when I took it for granted that we needed each other. But then he left, and he left without telling me. Without saying goodbye.

  This whole time I’ve been thinking how could someone who did that have loved me? How could someone who threw me away have ever needed me?


  And here he is, the only man I’ve ever dreamed about, this gorgeous, perfect man, the only person who stood by me through the worst days of my life, telling me he needs me. And I can’t take my eyes from his face. He is beautiful; he has always been beautiful, with that golden skin, that strong jaw, soft lips. But now he’s beautiful because he looks…

  Oh God, he looks like he’s hurting. Strong, but hurting. If there’s any guy who could take a punch at his weakest, it’s Marcus Roma. But I don’t want to hit him while he’s down.

  I just want to touch him. I want to go up to him, touch his face, find a way to make this all better for both of us. Find a way to erase the last five years, for both of us.

  And I hate that I feel that way.

  It’s exhausting.

  “Marcus…” I say, sitting down.

  “We have a deal,” he says quickly. Like he thinks I’m going to renege.

  “We have a deal,” I repeat. I just don’t know how I’m going to survive it.

  I’m worried about what he’ll say next. If it will be the thing that finally cuts down my remaining defenses, that wears down my sense of danger, that gets through to me, and I’ll just be bare to him. Too weak to hold off what I know isn’t good for me. He won’t even have earned it. He’ll just have won forgiveness by attrition.

  But I’m saved by a phone call.

  Marcus doesn’t immediately look away. He’s still staring at me like he might never look away, and if it were anyone else it would unnerve me. Finally, his phone starts on the second cycle of the ring and fishes it out of his pocket, saying to me, “I’m sorry, it’s work.”

  Meaning Alex Wolfe.

  I take the opportunity to escape. I don’t even say anything; I just head toward Shantha’s office, shelter from the storm that is Marcus and all the memories that come with him. I almost get away.

  “Lo, you working tonight?” he calls out after me.

  I force myself to turn around and look at him one last time. I can handle that much.

  “Nope,” I say.

  He smiles, brightening the room. “Good,” he says, covering the phone with one hand. “I’ll pick you up for a morning workout.”