The Lie(72)

He looks at me, frowning.

“You,” I explain, “were my downfall. Eventually I was able to get through the day without thinking about death, without blaming myself. But you…you were something I pushed out of my head. And it worked. I moved on.”

“Until you saw me,” he says softly.

“Until I saw you,” I tell him.

“Well,” he says with a heavy sigh. “This is the worst date ever, isn’t it?”

I can’t help but smile. “In a way. But I’m with you. You’re worth everything.”

“Even though I’m the man that ruined you?”

I wrap my hand around his. “I wouldn’t want to be ruined by anyone but you.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“I mean it. Brigs, you destroyed me. But you’re also piecing me back together. If I hadn’t found you again…I don’t know if I would ever feel the way that I’m feeling right now.”

“Reliving bad memories?”

“No,” I say softly. I clear my throat, feeling too many emotions swirling around. “I’m happy.” I pause, trying to explain. “It sounds so simple, I know but…”

“I’m happy too,” he says, giving me a quick smile. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s not simple at all, Natasha. It’s everything.”

He pours more wine in our cups and raises his in a toast. “To us. To everything.”

“To everything.”

We drink. We smoke. I lean against his shoulder and watch Winter play in the surf. We talk. I tell him my plans for graduation, that I’d like to start writing screenplays and probably not use my degree at all, he tells me ideas for future books. We discuss movies. We discuss actors. We discuss Europe and vacations and the French. We discuss Professor Irving and how much we both don’t like him and we discuss Max the bartender. We even discuss aliens, briefly, as we grapple for the best alien movie (his: Prometheus. Me: Aliens).

Eventually the sun sets and we take a walk along the beach in the lavender twilight. We weave between the white chalk monoliths and I drop to my knees, taking him in my mouth and making him come right there on the beach.

“Quite the date,” he says after, as we walk back to the car.

“Quite the date,” I agree.

We get in and speed back to the lights of London.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Natasha

London

Four Years Ago





“Still haven’t heard from him, huh?” Melissa asks as we sit at the bar, pints of beer in our hands. I’ve barely been eating all week, so a pint of Guinness is as close to a meal as I’m going to have. It’s just impossible to have an appetite when my stomach is churning with nerves, my heart fizzing like a freshly lit firecracker. Ever since Brigs told me that he loved me, my life has been turned upside down in the most gorgeous, unruly way.

But, naturally, Melissa doesn’t approve.

Why would anyone approve of Brigs and me?

I give her an innocent look as I delicately sip my beer. “What makes you say that?”

She rolls her eyes, brushing her hair out of her face. “Because your eyes keep drifting away and you’re not listening to a word I’m saying.”

“That’s not true,” I tell her, pointing the beer at her. “You were just saying how I ought to give Billy the Skid another chance.”

“Well, you should,” she says. “First of all, yes you said he was a sloppy kisser, but that doesn’t mean the sex will suck. Besides, you hooked up with him before the summer. Things might have changed by now.”

When she says before the summer, I know she’s reminding me of how I was before I met Brigs. But everything I was before him doesn’t seem to matter now. Especially not William Squire, who couldn’t sound more British if he tried, a guy from my class that I had a date with but felt absolutely no chemistry. Kissing him was like kissing a very wet, slimy wall. If that wall had long hair and a love of 80s rocker Sebastian Bach. And of course when I didn’t go out with him again, he immediately starting dating someone else from our class. You’d think grad school would be miles away from high school, but some people just can’t fucking grow up.

“Maybe,” I say, my noncommittal answer.

“You know what you’re doing with Brigs is wrong, don’t you?” she says so simply it makes my chin jerk back.

“I’m not doing anything with Brigs,” I tell her in a hush.

“Right. And that’s why when I showed up at your door, he was there. He stayed the night. You told me he kissed you.”

I swallow hard, my cheeks flashing with shame. “I didn’t sleep with him.”