Hard to Pretend (Hard to Love #2)

16. Chris

16

I didn’t want to answer Luce’s call. I wanted to invite Seb in and hide from the consequences of my actions.

The house of cards I’d constructed with my lies had crumbled to the ground. The tangled web I’d weaved was coming unraveled. My friends knew the truth.

It was time to face the music. I hit answer as I stepped inside my apartment building, only looking back once to steal a glance at Seb before the door closed. He was already walking back to his car. I knew that he’d have his own mess to clean up with his friend, the one who had spilled my secret, but that wasn’t my concern right now. My biggest concern right now was figuring things out with Luce and Mason.

I brought the phone to my ear. “Hey,” I greeted, trying to keep my tone casual.

“We need to talk.” Luce’s voice was blunt. Those who didn’t know her might have missed the anger and hurt layered into her words, but I could hear it clear as day. “We’re coming over.”

“We?”

“Me and River, Natalie and Ronnie, Mason,” she listed.

“No Vince?”

“He’s not involved in this.”

Because he wasn’t a long term partner. He hung out with the group when Mason invited him, but none of us hung out with him one-on-one. He didn’t have to bear witness to my shame or whatever anger my friends were going to throw my way. “I’m at home.”

“Yeah, Natalie told me she just dropped you off,” Luce answered bluntly. “We’ll be there in thirty.”

I had thirty minutes until my friends came and read me the riot act. I channeled my inner Seb and used that time to straighten my apartment. I didn’t want to think, because I would just play out every worst case scenario my mind could come up with. I would start to imagine life without my friends, without any friends. Seb would leave me, because he valued friendship and honesty and all of that. He’d think it was pathetic that I never told my friends the truth and that I’d lost them because of it. He probably already did.

I moved faster, picking up dirty clothes and everything else I found laying around on the floor. I straightened the cushions on my couch and positioned my remote neatly on the coffee table. I made sure that all of my dirty dishes were returned to the kitchen. The entire time, worst case scenarios danced at the edge of my mind. The whole clean away your woes strategy may have worked for Seb, but it was not working for me.

But time moved regardless and soon, I heard the knock. I opened the door and found my friends there. Luce was in front, arms crossed over her chest. While the anger and betrayal was brightest in her eyes, I could see it reflected in every single eye I met.

Natalie’s expression hurt the worst. It wasn’t just anger and betrayal. I could see pain and distrust there. I might have known Mason the longest, but I was closest to Natalie. The tiny redhead had even asked me to walk her down the aisle when she and Ronnie got married the year before, in place of her own father who had died when she was younger.

I stepped aside and let them in.

No one said anything until they were all settled around my living room. Luce sat on the couch and River perched on the arm next to her. Natalie and Ronnie took the last two spots on the couch. Mason took the arm chair I’d bought when I got my first apartment in King’s Bay, and I was left standing. I could feel the weight of their stares, and I wondered who would start.

I probably should, but I was a coward and didn’t.

Luce finally broke the ice. “We know.”

“Seb told me. ”

“Why didn’t you?” Mason asked. I forced myself to look at him, and then I looked away. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you lie to us?”

“Because you guys kept giving me shit for being single,” I told him bluntly. “That day at the coffee shop, you were trying to set me up on another blind date. I didn’t want to go through that, and I just said the first thing that came into my mind. Then Seb walked in.”

“So you asked a stranger to pretend to be your boyfriend?” Mason asked incredulously.

“He wasn’t a complete stranger. I had met him before. Once.” A one night stand that I’d meant to contact back and never had. “He agreed to play along, and it was just supposed to be that one time. The next time you asked, I’d say we didn’t work out, and you’d never know.”

“But instead you brought him to my birthday party?” Luce spat out. “And then what?”

“Then we went to meet his mom.”

“Does she know?” Natalie interrupted.

“No. I don’t think she knows that it wasn’t real when we met, but it is now. I got to know him, and he’s amazing. He’s—”

“Stop,” Mason cut me off. “We’re not talking about the epic love story you have with your boyfriend. We’re talking about the fact that you lied to us. Repeatedly. You had so many chances to come clean, and you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized.

“That’s not enough,” River said softly. I looked over at them. They were barely looking at me. Their eyes were on Luce, on the way her shoulders were hunched and the expression on her face. “You lied to everyone. How do we even know it’s real now?”

“Beyond the fact that the guy at PITS said it was,” Mason pointed out. “How are we supposed to trust you?”

My shoulders slumped. I hurt my friends with my lie. It hadn’t been intentional, but I’d still hurt them. I just didn’t want to be set up on another blind date, and then I didn’t want to live with the embarrassment of admitting the truth. I wished I could give a good answer as to why they should trust me again, but I didn’t have one. I’d lied to them, and trust wasn’t something that could just be fixed with the snap of my fingers.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized again. “What can I do to make this right?”

I watched as my friends exchanged glances. No one seemed to have an answer. Tension hung in the air between us, and I wished someone could give an easy way to make it right.

It was Natalie who finally answered. “Time.”

“Time?”

“Yes. We just found out about this. Let us have time to figure out how to trust you again. ”

It was a reasonable request. I nodded and watched as my friends filed out of my apartment. I couldn’t remember a time I’d felt more defeated and alone.

When I hadn’t heard from my friends by the next day, I knew I needed a second opinion. I needed someone to give me advice on how to fix what I’d broken. The obvious answer would’ve been to talk to Seb, but he was too entrenched in it. He had also known the truth the whole time. I needed someone else.

I needed my big brother.

I showed up at Joshua’s door just after noon with sandwiches from a little deli by his house. He let me in without any questions and poured me a lemonade.

“I think I ruined everything,” I started once we were sitting on his couch. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow as he took a bite, urging me to elaborate. “Seb and I weren’t dating when I told everyone we were. We were faking.”

Joshua choked on his sandwich. He took a large swig of his lemonade to clear his throat. “Wow. I didn’t see that one coming,” he said with a laugh. “And let me guess. You ruined it by predictably getting feelings for your fake boyfriend, telling him, and then acting like a dick when he didn’t feel the same way? ”

I glowered at my brother. “No, actually, I caught feelings for him, and he did feel the same way. It’s real now.”

“Impressive,” he said with a nod. “I thought that only happened in bad movies and cheesy romance novels.”

“Nope.”

“Then how did you ruin everything?”

I took a small sip of my lemonade and looked at my brother. I felt like such an idiot. My friends probably would’ve reacted the same way he did if they’d heard the truth from me. Instead, they’d had to find out from one of Seb’s friends. Or maybe they would’ve been just as pissed if I’d come clean to them after the fact. The lie seemed to be the problem, not the timing or how they learned the truth.

Joshua was still looking at me, studying me with dark eyes that were too similar to my own.

“I didn’t tell my friends the truth,” I answered. “They found out from one of Seb’s friends, and now they’re pissed at me.”

“How bad is it?”

I let out a heavy sigh and put down my sandwich. It tasted like cardboard anyway, even though I’d always loved that deli. “I think they’re going to hate me for a long time.”

Joshua raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I think you’re being a little dramatic, Christopher.”

“You didn’t hear them last night. ”

“What exactly did they say?”

“It wasn’t what they said,” I explained. “It was how they looked when they said it. Natalie looked like she was going to cry.”

“Oh, damn,” Joshua muttered. “I bet Luce looked like she was going to rip your throat out with her teeth?”

I nodded. “And then they asked why I did it and asked for time. They didn’t even know how I could fix this.”

“And it has been what? Twelve hours?”

I looked at my watch. “Like fifteen.”

“That’s not giving them time. You have to give them actual time. Meaning more than a day. Let them come to terms with everything, and then let them figure out what they need from you to fix it. Listen to them when they talk. You guys have been friends for a long time.” Not as long as some friendships, and while I’d thought our friendship was strong, I was doubting that now. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” I asked.

“Beating yourself up. You made a mistake, but they aren’t going to hate you forever.”

It felt like they would. Maybe he was right and I was being overly dramatic about everything. “I’m just…” I frowned, trying to figure out how to explain the way I felt inside. “I don’t want to lose them.”

“Give them time. Give them the weekend at least, then reach out to Natalie. ”

“Why Natalie?” I questioned.

He grinned and stole a pickle from my sandwich, popping it in his mouth and chewing before he answered. “Because she’s going to be the first one to forgive you.”

He was probably right, and I knew it. I picked back up my sandwich and spent the rest of the afternoon talking with my brother, trying to silence my worries.

“Have you talked to your friends?” Seb asked the next night. He’d come over after work, and we were sitting on the couch, full from dinner and watching our show.

He’d been good at not pushing me about the situation with my friends. He’d comforted me the first night. He even offered to come over so I didn’t have to be alone. When I didn’t take him up on it, he stayed on a video call with me all night until I fell asleep. When I woke up, my phone was dead, but I felt at peace until I remembered I was fighting with my friends and went to visit Joshua. His presence was having the same affect on me now.

Instead of racing through all the versions of my life that didn’t include my friends, I felt relaxed enough to talk about it. “Not yet. Joshua said I should text Natalie today, but every time I start…”

“You chicken out? ”

“Like the world’s biggest chicken,” I confirmed. “I don’t want to have her ignore me. I don’t want to find out that they hate me, you know?”

“Do you really think they hate you?” he asked, shifting to face me. I missed the weight of his body against mine immediately and fought the urge to pull him back.

“No,” I answered softly, “but I do know I hurt them.”

“That’s part of friendship, though,” he said simply. He took my hands in his and brought my knuckles to his lips, kissing them gently. “I hurt Holden the other night, after he told Mason and Luce about us. I shouted at him and basically called him a dumbass in a not-so-affectionate way. I was an asshole, but we talked it out later and moved on.” His lips curled up into a small smile. “We always move on from the moments of assholery.”

I laughed at his turn of phrase, but my laugh sounded hollow to my ears. “That’s where I think our friend groups are a bit different,” I confided. “We don’t have a lot of moments of assholery, as you so eloquently called them. I don’t think we’ve ever actually fought.”

“You and your friends have never fought?”

“No?” At least not that I could recall off the top of my head. We’d bickered from time to time, but even that had mostly been during game nights. It had never been anything serious, never anything that required time and space. We’d always been honest with one another. I should have thought about that before I lied to them, before I dug myself into this stupid hole. “We’re more talk it out people. Watching them leave the other night without us talking it out felt wrong . ”

Seb looked thoughtful for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was steady. “It probably felt wrong to them too.”

“Have you and the guys ever had anything like this?”

He nodded. “More times than I can count. I remember this really bad one. It was early in college, and it was the first time we’d really been away from each other. Jonas was going through some stuff, and he was lashing out a lot. One thing lead to another, and he ended up exploding on us. A lot of really unkind things were said, and I thought that maybe it was the end. I was devastated.” I could hear the hurt in his voice as he talked. Even years later, fighting with his friends had left scars. I wondered if this was the first scar on my friendships, if they’d think back to it and have that same look in their eyes. I didn’t regret getting with Seb, but I regretted lying to them. “Thursday came around, and we all got online. Everyone but Jonas. We talked for a little bit, but it felt wrong without him. It felt like we were incomplete. We started blowing up his phone, one call after another after another until he finally answered Matt. Matt told him to get his ass online, and we talked it out. He admitted some of the stuff he’d been struggling with, and we figured out ways to help him.”

“What kind of things was he dealing with?” I asked. “I mean, if you can tell me.”

“Anxiety issues. After that, we convinced him to go to the mental health clinic on his campus. He still turns into an asshole when it flares up though,” he answered with a laugh. “So you know, when you meet him, if he’s being too big of a dick, don’t take it personally. He usually doesn’t mean it.”

“Usually?”

Seb shrugged. “Anyway, the point of the story is that sometimes, you have to give someone a bit of time, and if that doesn’t work, you have to badger them into talking about what’s really wrong.”

“I know what’s really wrong. I lied to them.”

“There’s probably more to it than that,” he countered. “Maybe it’s just the because it’s the first time, but there’s probably more to it than that. You need to figure it out.”

I pulled him closer to me. “Can I figure it out tomorrow?”

Tonight, I wanted to stay close to him. I wanted to bask in the comfort that he provided. I needed his steadiness. He curled up back against my chest, and we spent the night watching our show.