Lie to Me (an OddRocket title) (24 page)

"I'm not sailing, Mom," I said, my heart racing.

RD missed the water glass, spilling all over the table. He reached for a napkin and knocked over Aunt Lucy’s glass of wine. "Whoa! My mistake. Let me get a towel."

"No. I'll get a towel." I jumped up.

"I can use a napkin." Mom blotted the damp tablecloth.

“Please, let me get a towel,” RD said, his face burning red as he went back inside.

I wondered how things could possibly get worse. I was going to be exposed for making up a story to the wife of my married boyfriend.

"Priya's here!" Addie called, walking onto the deck with my ex-best friend in tow.

"Priya!" Mom said. "Pull up a chair. Have you eaten?"

"Oh, I didn't mean to invite myself." Priya looked radiant, like she'd been sunbathing that day, but something flashed across her face when she saw my mom. She hadn't watched Mom wither in degrees like me. I'm sure my mother looked shockingly thin to her.

"Well, stay and have something. It's been too long since you've been over." Mom shot me a meaningful look with a subtext that said something like,
Go make up with your friend, Cassandra
. For once, I was grateful for Priya's impromptu arrival. At least no one was asking me about my boyfriend or summer job.

"Well, okay," Priya stumbled. "If it's okay with Cassie."

"Sure. It's fine." What was I supposed to do say? No? RD came back and blotted the pink stain on the table in front of Mom. I stared at my salad plate.

"Oh, RD! This is Cassie's best friend, Priya." I took a chance and looked at RD as Mom made introductions. A pained smile crossed his face. I knew he was putting it together. Best friend. Priya. The one who knows something, but not everything.

"Hi." Priya pulled a chair up next to me.

"Hello, Priya." RD cleared his throat and everyone was quiet.

"So, how big is your boat?" Addie didn't seem to notice things like awkward silences. "I took some pictures of it, but it's hard for me to guess. Is it forty feet?"

"No." RD sat down and glanced around the table, his eyes meeting mine for a moment. "It's much smaller. Only twenty-two."

"Still, that's pretty big." Addie took a big bite of pasta. "Are you a good sailor?"

"I guess you could say that." RD took a gulp of his beer.

"Addie aspires to be a sailor," Mom said, as if this would explain something. "But we've agreed that the girls need to wait to get on the water until they are older."

Priya put her elbows on the table and leaned toward me. "You okay? You haven’t returned my calls and you look really pale."

"I'm fine. I just don't think I'm up for talking a lot, you know." I kept my voice low. Addie's interrogation had moved on to turtles and whether a whale could ever be trained as a pet like a dog. I tried to watch RD out of the corner of my eye. He avoided looking at me. I felt invisible.

"I was heading over to Nay Nay's to help plan the Jekyll beach part,” Priya whispered. “You want to come?" This would be the third party of the summer. I figured it was just one more opportunity for me to humiliate myself in front of the entire class.

"I'm a little grounded these days, Priya. And I haven't exactly had the best time at parties lately."

"Did you get in trouble over Nay Nay's?" She didn't even wait for me to answer and glanced at my mom. "I'm so sorry about what happened there… the scene with Nick. I called the house. I didn't mean to get you in trouble."

"Can we talk about this later?"

"Of course." Priya leaned her head in closer. "But you should know that you have nothing to be embarrassed about. People forgot what Nick said a second later. What happened at the party… the things he said…he was really sorry."

"Yeah?" It pained me to have this conversation at the table.

"You know what's really weird? I think he's crazy about you, Cassie, which I know is awkward because you have that new guy." A moment of silence opened up as Priya spoke.

Rachel leaned over. "Are you talking about your boyfriend again? I thought he was an old boyfriend."

RD dropped his fork on the glass table.

"Cassie got dumped," Addie said, talking with her mouth full.

"Addie. Close your mouth," Mom interrupted. "And that's not nice."

"So you don't have a boyfriend?" Rachel asked, looking confused.

"Well." Everyone looked at me, eyes boring into my skull. I wondered which lie to tell, which story made the most sense. "Men, I mean boys, are just trouble, you know?" I tried to laugh. "I had a boyfriend, then I didn't." I looked at Mom, Addie and Aunt Lucy, who all nodded. "But then I did."

Priya smiled as if she was thinking of the new, unknown guy. RD looked pale. "And you know what?" I said. Rachel held Duncan on her lap, his eyes fighting to stay open. "I think that I should really be focusing on other things and that's why I've decided I'm not going to date anyone at all. I'm done. I'm totally done. For the record, I no longer have any boyfriends."

"But I didn't think you had a boyfriend," Addie said.

"She didn’t for a while, but now the old one wants her back," Priya said.

"This is way too confusing," RD said, standing up and laughing. "Duncan this is why you’re never dating." He reached out and ruffled his son’s blonde head.

"And believe me, if we ever have a daughter, she won't be allowed to leave the house," Rachel said.

Right then, I felt like Rachel had blown a crater right in the center of my body. It didn't seem possible that someone could look at me and not see the damage. RD walked through the French doors into the kitchen.

"I have to go to the bathroom," I said. "Be right back."

I walked into the kitchen and closed the doors behind me, listening to the sounds of the house, trying to figure out where RD had gone. "RD?" I called softly, glancing over my shoulder back to the patio. "RD?" I walked down the hall into the entryway. He'd disappeared. "Where is he?" I whispered out loud and turned right into Rachel.

"You're looking for RD?" she asked, standing in the hall between the family room and the entryway. I felt like she could see inside my head, her perky smile replaced with worry. She looked so young to me, holding Duncan on her hip. A simple, gold band around her finger, I wondered what it had felt like to slip that on, knowing that RD wouldn't have married her without their baby. I didn't want to talk to her; looking at her made me want to cry.

"I was kind of looking. No. I mean, not really. I just thought he might be here, I guess." My face flushed and my own voice sounded awkward to me.

"Oh," Rachel said, a hundred words in that one syllable. "Those are very pretty earrings." She reached out to touch the Orcas that RD had given me. I’d pulled my hair back behind my ears. I hadn’t even realized it.

"Someone looking for me?" With the sound of the front door closing, RD walked back inside and put his arm around Rachel. He pulled her close and kissed her temple.

I gasped out loud and RD's eyes widened.
Easy, Cassie. Easy
, he seemed to say. "What do you say we all go finish this dinner?"

"I'm not hungry." I looked right at him. How could he kiss her right in front of me? He'd warned me he might do that, he'd told me to understand, but how could he do that after what he'd done to me in the boathouse. How could he be so sweet and affectionate with her and act like I was some horrible liability, a mistake that needed to be hidden?

"Sure you are, Cassie," RD laughed. Rachel smiled at him, her face strained. She glanced at me and back at her husband, her face tightening with each passing moment.

I wanted to tell her. I wanted to open my mouth and let it all out, this burning in my stomach. Scream it, Cassie. Just scream it. Tell Rachel what her husband has been doing to you below deck. Tell her about the things he whispers in your ear, the way he likes you to move your hands, the things he's taught you in the dark.

But I just stood there. Every breath I took moved through my body in sharp waves. It was as if all the horrible thoughts and secrets I held inside had formed walls through my body, blocking the pathway to my lungs.

"Are you all right, Cassie?" Rachel stepped away from RD.

"She's fine." RD's smile grew so wide that he didn't even look like himself anymore.

"No. I don't think she's all right." Rachel's voice sounded heavy with something new. "We're leaving." As she turned, RD reached for her. She slapped his hand away.

"Rachel."

"I think Cassie needs to rest." Rachel didn't look at me. She focused on her husband. "Naomi has been very gracious and I don't think we should keep her up any later. I am going to go outside, thank our hosts, pack up our son and go home." She said "our son" louder than she needed to.

She left us standing in the hallway.

"I'm sorry," I stammered. "I'm sorry. Did I do something wrong?"

"Enough, Cassie."

"RD. I didn't mean to do anything." I was so scared of him leaving. He might never come back, but another feeling pulsed right under my skin. I hated him in that moment. I hated him with every shaking bone in my body, and I didn't want him to go.

"Shh." He grabbed my shoulder and leaned toward me, his face so close I could smell the beer on his breath. "I don't know what you said to her, but this isn't good. This isn't good. All right?"

"Well, you shouldn't have come over," I whispered, wanting to hurt him.

"I told you we needed to keep this secret. That it would be hard. But I can see now that this isn't going to work."

I wanted to argue with him, to fight back. But I felt like I was standing before a stranger. I didn't know what to say to someone I didn't know at all.

"This ends right now," he said. "You and me. It's over. All of it. It's over. It never happened."

My heart tumbled out of my chest and crashed onto the floor in front of me. It broke into a million pieces.

RD shut me out. He walked out of the house that night and closed the door so hard I felt like he'd opened me up and cut out my heart. I hurt. Everything inside of me ached.
This is where my heart used to be
, I wanted to say, pointing to my chest.
It's gone. I don't know why I'm still standing.
The trouble was, there was nobody to tell.

I couldn't sleep and the thought of food made me sick. I didn't care about Nick and the note anymore. What did it matter? It was over. RD had chosen. His voice had contained a finality that I'd never heard before, an edge so angry and sharp that I couldn't believe he'd known that he was talking to me.

Mom added another week to my grounding for lying about the summer job. I didn't fight her since I knew I was getting off easy. When Mom asked me about RD, I downplayed the hours I'd spent on the boat, but admitted that I'd kept working when she told me not to. It was easy to agree to quit. RD had disappeared. There was nowhere to go anymore.

I called him. I couldn't help myself. I wondered if this is what drug addicts felt, this endless need for something outside of themselves. A need so big they'd do anything to feel good again, for just one moment. At first, I'd just hang up when I got his voicemail, terrified of leaving a message. I knew he'd be able to tell that I'd called. He'd see the record on his phone, but I didn't care. I wanted him to think of me. Then one day he answered.

"Cassandra," he said.

I stood outside the back door of the Hideaway leaning against the green dumpster. My hands shaking, I clutched the phone to my ear, my eyes full of tears. "I thought we should talk. I want to see you," I stumbled. I hadn't been fully prepared to hear his voice. He sounded like a stranger. "RD, please."

"I told you. No more." He breathed so slowly that I could almost feel his breath coming through the phone, hot against my neck. The way he'd breathed when he held me below the deck.

"RD, I don't want it to be over. I want to be with you. I promise I won't say anything. I won't. Please. "

"Cassandra, what we did. It never happened."

"How can you say that? How can you say it just
wasn't
?"

"Don't call me again.” He hung up.

I stood gasping like a fish, the phone still pressed against my ear. There was no air in a world without RD. I had been thrown out of the water to die. I wiped the tears from my cheek with the back of my hand and took a few uncertain steps away from the restaurant. I couldn't go back inside, not looking like this. I could barely stand.

Mariah stuck her head out the back door. "Cass?" Her face fell when she saw me. "Oh, honey. What's wrong? You okay?"

She ran to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I sobbed into her blond hair that smelled faintly of coconuts and French fries. "Oh, sweetheart. You just let it all out. You let out all of the sadness. It's okay."

"But it's not okay," I gasped between tears. She thought I was crying for Mom. I could tell by the way she held me. Her voice low and soothing, she rocked me in her arms as if I was a baby that needed sleep. Everyone in the world thought the heartbroken look on my face was about my mother, that my heart was being torn in two as Mom slipped further away from me day by day. Nobody knew the horrible things I had done, the lies that I'd told and how my body ached to be touched by the one person in the world who wouldn't even come near me.

As the weeks passed, I didn't feel that time was healing any of my wounds. I didn't call RD again after he hung up on me. I felt erased. RD had sailed away and I had nothing to prove he'd ever really existed.

One afternoon, I was at the Hideaway listening to Mariah rattle on about her wedding. As long as she did most of the talking, I was okay. It was the silent moments that were dangerous. I'd imagine RD walking through the front door looking for me. "Hey, beautiful," he'd say, slipping his arm around my back, pulling me close to his warm body. "I've missed you."

And he'd explain how confused he'd been and how Rachel wasn't around and that he couldn't live without me because I was the girl he'd been searching for his whole life. I was the girl of his dreams. He'd come back and I wouldn't have to think he was a liar anymore.