The Trouble with Faking (19 page)

“Well,” Noah says. “I’m glad you’re finally accepting the truth.”

“And
you
,” I shout, turning to him. “You couldn’t stay sitting for another
three seconds
so I could tell you that after the date Damien and I went on, I decided you were definitely right about him not being the guy for me.”

“What?” Damien says. “You decided I’m not—and you—” He faces Noah. “You want to talk to
me
about deception when you’ve been telling her not to date me? You’re a damn—”

“It wasn’t like that,” Noah shouts. “I wasn’t trying to get her to choose me over you. I was trying to get her to see that the person she fell in love with when you were both kids doesn’t exist anymore, and possibly never did.”

Damien looks at me. “You … how long have you—”

“For too long, Damien. For
too long
. I’ve watched you with every girlfriend you’ve ever had, I’ve listened to all your problems and all your break-ups and all your musings about the next perfect girl to come along. And when it was finally my turn, I realised it was too late for us. You’re not the person I need, and I’m not the person you need.”

“So the fake relationship idea was a lie from the start,” Damien says quietly. “You weren’t doing it to help me get Marie. You were doing it so
you
’d get me. You’ve been deceiving me too.”

“Oh my gosh,
everyone
’s been deceiving
everyone
, okay? I never liked Mike, and apparently you got over Marie pretty quickly, which means that when you were hanging out with her, you were probably only doing it to make
me
jealous instead of the other way around. We’ve both lied. We’ve both kept things secret that probably should have been said out loud. Now we need to just
stop
everything and move on.”

“And what about poor Marie and Mike?” Noah says. “Are they supposed to be left wanting both of you when neither of you want them anymore?”

“You.” I point at him. “Just stop. You’re always going on about bottling things up and how it’s not healthy and I need to get everything out, but what about you?
You
don’t tell
me
anything. Who’s Tania, huh? And why did you think you’d never get over her?”

Noah steps closer to me, his voice growing dangerously low as he speaks. “Perhaps if you’d taken the time to
ask
about my private life, the way I did for you, then you’d know.”

“Well maybe I’m of the opinion that private lives are PRIVATE!” I yell.

“SHUT UP!”

I jump as the voice of someone I had no idea was there shouts from the stairs below me. I swivel around and look down. “Mike?” I whisper in horror.

“I came to ask my sub-warden a question about the tutoring programme,” Mike says. “Guess I arrived at a bad time.” And with that, he turns and disappears down the stairs, leaving me without a doubt that he heard everything he wasn’t supposed to.

DAMMIT!

I hurry downstairs after him, reaching the corridor in time to see him walking briskly away. I almost chase after him, but I have no idea what I’d say. So I run for the foyer instead, tears already pricking behind my eyes.

I run all the way back to my room at Fuller. I kick my shoes off, drop my raincoat on the floor, silence my cell phone, and climb into bed. I’m glad for my numerous cushions this evening; they’re helping to hide me from the world. It isn’t even dark yet, but I don’t care. I want to fall asleep so my brain doesn’t keep replaying all our horrible, angry words. So I won’t keep seeing their faces over and over. Damien’s guilt when he realised I’d heard everything he said. Mike’s disappointment at hearing about our scheme. And the hurt in Noah’s eyes when I turned on him.

Through the duvet and cushions, I hear a soft tap on my door. “Andi?” Carmen calls to me. “Is everything okay? I heard your door slamming.”

I consider ignoring her, but I’ve already alienated three people today. I should probably try to keep the friends I have left. I lower the duvet cover and say, “I think it’s unlocked.”

She opens the door and surveys me amidst my comfort-pile of cushions. “Early night?”

“You could say that.”

“It didn’t go well when you spoke to Damien?”

I shake my head. “The poop hit the fan. In a BIG way.”

“Well, that sounds like a good story,” Carmen says, shutting the door and swiping several cushions off the bed so she can sit. “Do tell.”

I relate the whole messy confrontation. “I didn’t even get to say the things I was planning to say to Damien,” I add at the end. “All the wrong stuff spewed out, and then Mike was suddenly there, and then I ran away like a scared ostrich-chicken.”

“Ostrich-chicken? Because … you’re hiding from the problem like an ostrich and you’re scared like a chicken?”

“Yes. I should put that on a pin badge,” I murmur, sinking further down beneath my duvet. “
Scared Ostrich-Chicken
. I’ll put it on a hat so everyone will know the truth about me.”

“You may be unaware of this,” Carmen says, “but self-pity is very unattractive on you.”

“Wow. Your bedside manner is exceptional. You should be a doctor.”

“Sarcasm’s right up there with self-pity.”

“Ugh, come on! Just give me five minutes to wallow. I messed up, okay? Badly. They all hate me now. Damien, Noah, Mike. Marie’s probably going to find out soon as well, since we were yelling loud enough for at least half of Smuts to hear us, and then she’ll hate me too.”

“Well … yes, I suppose they might hate you. But they’ll probably get over it. And I doubt you were the only one at fault. Damien doesn’t exactly have any right to hate you after he flat out lied to Noah about you.”

“Yes,” I say, thinking back to that part. “How could he say that? How could he tell such a horrible lie so easily to someone who’s meant to be his best friend? I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t heard it myself.”

“I would have,” Carmen mutters, looking away.

I stare at her. “Why do you say that? Do you know something?”

She sighs. “When you told me you guys got together for real, I figured I’d have to show you, but now that you’ve broken up, it isn’t necessary for—”

“You’ve been keeping something from me?” I demand, sitting up. “After you ignored me for
weeks
because I did the same thing to you?”

“Okay, look.” She holds her hands up. “I realise that after we had that long chat in the car about being honest, I probably should have told you this. But when I realised it wasn’t actually you Damien was cheating with, I figured I didn’t need to create any more drama by showing you.”

“By showing me
what
?” I ask, my voice icy. “I swear, if you don’t open up right now, there’s gonna be a whole lot more poop flying at the fan.” She stands, opens my door, and heads across the landing to her own room. Seconds later, she’s back, holding something small in her hand. She holds it up. “A flash drive?” I take it from her. “Wait, is this …” The initials D. S. are written on the side. “Damien Sanders,” I whisper.

“Yes,” she says. “I found it outside a few days after we moved into Fuller. Then I forgot about it. When I remembered it a couple of weeks later, I figured I’d just take a quick look at it to find out who it belongs to, but I saw a little more than I bargained for.”

I look up. “What’s on it?”

“Perhaps you should see for yourself.” She reaches for my laptop on the desk and passes it to me.

With apprehension filling my stomach, I lift the laptop lid and plug the flash drive in. It’s filled with folders and documents labelled with course, assignment, and project names. There’s nothing immediately suspicious. “What am I looking for?”

“A document called “Letter.’”

I raise an eyebrow. “You opened a document called ‘Letter’?”

“Well, I wasn’t planning to
read
it. I thought I’d just scroll to the bottom and check for a name.”

I move my finger over the touchpad until the mouse pointer is sitting over the ‘Letter’ file. I hesitate, then double click to open it.

When I hung up the phone just now, there were so many things I still wanted to say. So many things I told myself I
shouldn’t
say. But I can’t help it anymore. You know how I feel about you, and I know you feel the same, so I don’t see a reason to deny this any longer.

I’m falling for you.

I can’t stop thinking about you.

I wish I could be around you all the time.

I live for the moments when my phone pings and I get a message from you, and I wish I could have more. More than just messages and phone calls late at night. I wish we could be
real
and
out in the open
.

You asked me once before, and I told you I couldn’t then. I couldn’t be with you while Charlotte was going through such a difficult time. But I’ve thought about it many times, and if you are still asking, my answer now is
yes
.

Damien

I blink at the words on the screen. “He lied after all,” I murmur. “He really was cheating on Charlotte.”

Carmen nods. “And I assumed it was with you, which is why I thought you were lying to me. It was only after you yelled at me that I realised your name isn’t anywhere in the letter and that it could have been anyone.” She pauses. “Are you … okay?”

If I’d discovered this a few months ago, I’d be devastated, but after hearing Damien lie about me earlier, it isn’t entirely surprising to discover he lied about this too. “Yeah. I’m okay.” I snap the laptop shut and push cushions out the way so I can get up. “Doesn’t mean I’m not confronting him about it.”

“Oh. Um, are you—”

“Yes.” I slip my feet back into my shoes.

“But what if he—”

“Still yes.” I yank the flash drive from the laptop and push it into my jeans pocket.

“Andi!” she shouts in frustration. “You don’t even know what I’m trying to say.”

“It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to say.” I grab my keys. “Put the latch down when you leave, will you?” I run downstairs and out of Fuller. Light rain sprinkles across my bare arms, but it doesn’t matter that I left my raincoat because it only takes half a minute or so to get to Smuts. I reach it just as a large group of guys are coming out, probably on their way to dinner, which makes it easy for me to slip past them. I run up Damien’s stairs and push his door open without bothering to knock—a move that would have been a bit awkward if the door had been locked.

“Andi?” Damien looks up from his desk, startled. He stands. “Andi, I’m so glad you came back. I’ve been calling and calling you. All that stuff about deception and lies … we can move past that, right? I … it’s …”

“I thought you liked the way I dress,” I say, placing my hands on my hips.

“What?” He frowns. “Yeah. I do. I’ve told you that before.”

“But you also told Noah that I dress weirdly.”

Wariness appears in Damien’s eyes. “No, what I meant was that that’s how some other people see you. I’ve never seen you that way. I like your style.”

“Really. Well you know what, Damien? I don’t believe you. I never would have called you a liar, but you’ve lied to me so many times in the past few weeks that I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Andi,” he says, looking hurt. “How can you say that? What have I lied to you about?”

I pull the flash drive out of my back pocket and hold it up. “Who were you cheating on Charlotte with?”

“
What?
Andi, you know I’d never—”

“I saw the letter. I know you were still with Charlotte when you wrote it. You called her paranoid for thinking you were cheating on her, but she was right all along.” I throw the flash drive at him. He fumbles, but manages to catch it.

“At the beginning of the year,” he says slowly, turning the flash drive over in his hands, “the first day I saw you, I told you I’d lost this. Have you had it since then? Have you been keeping this secret to yourself all this time, waiting for a moment when you could use it against me?”

“Are you
crazy
? You might have done something like that, Damien, but not me. I saw that letter for the first time about five minutes ago because somebody who is a
real
friend to me decided I needed to see it.”

“Well that
real
friend of yours needn’t have bothered. I wrote that letter when I was feeling desperate, but I never sent it. Nothing ever happened with her.”

“With who? Was it Marie?”

“It doesn’t matter because nothing happened!”

“Why did you save the letter?”

“DEAR GOD, ANDI,” Damien shouts as he flings the flash drive at the wall. “Stop being so bloody PARANOID.”

I take an involuntary step backwards, feeling for a moment as though I’m standing in front of a different person. I remember Noah saying that fighting isn’t bad, it’s honest, and I wonder if that means I’ve never seen the real Damien before. I’ve never even seen him mildly angry, much less furious.