All the Lies

by Charlotte Byrd

  “I'm sorry that he hurt your sister,” I say after a long pause. “She deserves a lot better and I told her that.”

  “There's no need to apologize. You are not the one that hurt her,” Brooke says nonchalantly.

  “Yeah, I guess not,” I say.

  16

  Emma

  I want Brooke to come with me, but she refuses.

  I know that it's probably best that I talk to Dad by myself, but I'm still afraid.

  Even after all these years, I still feel like I'm his little girl and I don't want to disappoint him.

  It's too late for that though.

  As soon as my dad sees me, he turns on his heel and walks toward the bar. I catch up with him anyway.

  “Okay,” he says, waving to me with a glass of oak colored liquid in his right hand.

  I'm not much of a drinker, but I decide that I need a little bit more liquid courage coursing through my veins to get through this conversation.

  My father is in his early 60s and is only now getting a little bit of salt in his hair.

  He likes to work out and stay in shape. His skin has a nice tan to it, appropriate for someone who spends a lot of time on the tennis court.

  He tried to encourage all three of his daughters to take up tennis, but only Lindsey answered the call. Still, that didn’t stop him from sending us to tennis camp and getting us private tutors.

  For the longest time, he seemed to believe that if only Brooke and I had the right instructor then we would fall in love with the sport that he loves. That hasn't happened.

  On the weekends, Dad likes to play golf.

  While I have enjoyed it the few times that I have played, that's not an activity that women are typically encouraged to play, especially not in his circle.

  The golf course seems to be the domain for the partners and the few occasional associates, which almost all of them are men.

  I know that the firm now employs a number of female associates and even has a few partners, but I'm not sure whether they are laying out the red carpet for them to spend their weekends with everyone else at the club.

  “So, the wedding is off?” Dad asks, taking a seat behind the bar.

  There are a few people his age milling around him but they quickly scatter as soon as he sits down and invites me to take the seat next to him.

  “You know them?” I ask.

  “They work for me,” he says nonchalantly.

  Despite the fact that he’s an attorney, he is an expert at the understatement.

  The culture of our world seems to be going in the direction of exuberance and exaggeration with words like awesome and great being thrown around all over the place, but my dad doesn’t play that game.

  If he were to say that he knows someone then they are likely friends, but not very close ones.

  If he were to call someone a friend…

  Well, frankly, I don't think that he has ever bestowed that word on anyone besides our dog.

  Dad turns his chair toward me and props up his head.

  Suddenly, he looks exhausted.

  It's not just because he is head deep into a very difficult and high-profile trial, this has to do with me.

  “I'm sorry. I should've told you sooner, but I actually thought that maybe Mom did.”

  “I thought that after all these years you would know that your mother and I aren't on the closest terms.”

  He laughs, tossing his head back and shaking it slightly from side to side.

  “I thought that maybe you two talked about things that involve us kids.”

  He furrows his eyebrows and moves a little bit closer to me, making his disappointment quite visible.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  I don't want to talk about this, but I owe him an explanation.

  I wish Mom weren’t so discreet and that this didn’t come to him as a surprise as it did for the rest of the audience.

  “Yesterday, everything was fine. We were in love. I thought that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.”

  “And today?”

  “Today it feels like he's a stranger.”

  “What happened?”

  “I found out that he's cheating on me. He has been seeing his boss since three years before we got together. He says that it’s nothing serious. She's married. About a year ago, they got back together and started fooling around at the office again. I walked in on them today at lunch.”

  My dad nods his head slightly and leans back against the chair. I don't know what he's going to say.

  I only just found out that he has been on the other side of this conversation with his own wife, apparently on more than one occasion. There’s a strong possibility that he’ll try to make excuses for Alex.

  “You shouldn’t marry him,” Dad says without a moment of hesitation. “Men like that don't change. I should know. I'm one of them.”

  I shake my head.

  I can't believe what he's saying to me. Suddenly tears start to bubble up at the back of my eyes and explode onto the surface.

  “There's no need to cry,” he says, putting his arm around me.

  I don't know why I'm crying. It has been quite an emotional day, but somehow his support in all this means everything. He's the last person that I ever thought would understand and yet, here he is, standing and taking my back despite everything.

  “Your mother and I have had quite a complicated relationship,” Dad continues. “I love her, always have, but there's another part of me that nothing is ever enough. I never have enough clients, enough money, enough success. That thinking spills over into my personal life.”

  I’ve never heard my father talk like this…with so much self-awareness.

  "It's not that I don't love your mother. It's just that sometimes I want more. I know that’s selfish. I know that I'm hurting her. I can promise her that I will never hurt her again and that’s true when I say that, but then I can’t help myself. My intentions are good but I don’t have the best impulse control.”

  My father has never been this honest with me about anything. Frankly, I had no idea that he was even capable of so much self-reflection. I'm about to say something, but then his phone rings.

  “Think about what I said, Emma. You deserve to be with someone who cares about you and doesn't make you question your worth. I don't think you'll find that with Alex,” he says and answers it.

  17

  Emma

  I sleep over at Brooke’s apartment in Santa Monica and, in the morning, she wants to go to the beach. Today is Friday, a workday, but I'm off because we had plans to celebrate our engagement in Laguna Beach.

  Normally, I love the beach, even though the beaches in Southern California can be a little bit windy and not that warm most of the year. The morning is overcast and breezy, a typical morning by the water, and all I want to do is stay buried under the blankets in her spare room.

  Brooke has other plans.

  Even though she's heavier than I am, she loves to work out and exercise. She runs a few hours a week, usually in the morning, right when she wakes up. She also does a number of classes at the gym.

  I also have a gym membership, but the few times that I go, I pick the hours that are least popular with the locals, so nothing during the early morning or early evening. I feel embarrassed about how my stomach moves when I walk on the treadmill and the fact that my face gets really red after even just a little bit of cardiovascular work.

  None of that seems to bother Brooke in the least. At least not anymore.

  It's a little bit after ten and she’s back from yoga, where she is undoubtably the largest person there. She’s smiling and invigorated just like she usually is after a hard workout.

  When we were growing up, I was able to confide in Brooke about how I felt about my body, but recently I just feel embarrassed about not loving myself enough. She is all about positivity and acceptance. Somehow being unable to accept myself makes me feel worse.

  Brooke’s
two-bedroom apartment is a few blocks from the water, near Montana and the Promenade. Her street has a number of boutique eateries, little cute clothing shops, and even a cycling store. Santa Monica doesn't look like a very high-end city, at least that's the image that it cultivates, but this two-bedroom costs our dad close to $4,000 a month. I don't think that she contributes much to the rent, but we have never really talked about it. The one thing that she knows is that I don't take any money from our parents.

  “Okay,” I say, finally caving to her demands while we eat a lush breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup. “We can go to the beach if you help me do some research on D. B. Carter first. It's really stressing me out, the fact that I have to turn in something on Monday and I have nothing. If I don't get the story right, she's probably going to fire me.”

  “She can't fire you over one story,” Brooke says.

  She is well aware of my relationship with Corrin and everything that has happened, but it doesn't seem like she is fully comprehending the extent of the situation.

  “Corrin has been looking for a reason to get rid of me for a long time. If I can't deliver the story or at least show her that I have done a good amount of work on it, then she is just going to fire me and say that it's because I've been so preoccupied with my wedding.”

  Feeling flustered, I shovel a pancake into my mouth and try to make the woes of my failed relationship go away through food. Brooke gets on the computer and does some research. She counts up all of the publications that D. B. Carter has on Amazon and delivers the verdict. 152 books.

  “How long has he been publishing?”

  “She,” Brooke corrects me. “Listen, this is a woman and you better accept that.”

  “Okay, she. How long has she been publishing?”

  “It looks like it has been seven years. So, not too bad. At first there were some thrillers and more standard fantasy. Then in the last couple years, she has mainly been focusing on urban and epic fantasy,” Brooke says.

  I open my computer and we try to balance both laptops and our plates on the small marble table in her kitchen. After a few moments, I give up and place my MacBook on my lap. I check the messages that I have sent to D. B. Carter asking to meet. They all go unanswered, but perhaps not unread.

  “Listen,” Brooke says, the sun just coming out and her pointing to the few rays of sunshine peeking in through the blinds. “Let's take advantage of this and get some nice photos on the beach. I promise I'll help you do some more research when we get back.”

  “No,” I say. “You go. I'll just stay here.”

  “Come with me. It will do you some good to get some fresh air.”

  She's right.

  I want to fight her on it, but I can’t.

  I don't have the energy.

  I head to the guest room and slip on a pair of pants and a hoodie over my T-shirt. It's in the mid-60s, but the wind can be brutal so I don't risk it. Besides, with the hoodie wrapped around me, it gives me a little bit more opportunity to mope.

  We walk to the beach and Brooke starts taking a few outside shots of whatever's in front of her. There's a bread store that puts out fresh baked loaves in the window. They look so delicious that my mouth actually waters looking at them. Brooke snaps a picture of them and then one of her pointing to them in a selfie for her Instagram stories.

  “You seem to like taking photos a lot,” I say. “Have you ever thought about doing something in photography?”

  “Actually, I have. A friend of mine asked me to photograph her wedding. The only problem is that I don't have a good camera. Those Cannon ones go for a grand.”

  “Did you ask Dad?”

  “I did. He said to ask him again after the engagement party. Apparently, he spent a lot on it.”

  I roll my eyes and she laughs.

  “You know that I had nothing to do with that party, right?”

  “Of course! You don't think that I know you? That old party was just all about Mom and Lindsey celebrating themselves. You were the guest of honor, but no one gave a damn about what you wanted.”

  “Yeah,” I say quietly. “If they did, then there wouldn't be any toasts and I wouldn’t have to announce to 200 people that my fiancé is a fucking cheater and a liar.”

  “I'm really sorry about that,” she says, taking my hand in hers and giving me a squeeze.

  When we get to the beach, we walk past the monkey bars. There’s a ridiculously hot guy with eight pack abs doing upside down crunches. This is a change from the usual when there are guys with only six pack abs doing pull-ups.

  Brooke points to him, but I have my eye on someone else. It suddenly occurs to me that since I'm no longer engaged or even in a relationship that these men are an actual option for me.

  Brooke continues to take selfies of herself in various poses. She brought a few changes of outfits in her oversized tote bag and layers them one after the other, removing the one underneath to vary the shots. Underneath it all, she’s wearing a two piece.

  “You mind snapping a few pictures?” she asks, forcing me to look up from my Kindle in the middle of a very exciting part in the story.

  “I don't really want to,” I say.

  “Come on, please,” she begs.

  I let out a deep sigh, scramble up to my feet, and take her phone. She tells me exactly where to stand and how to shoot it. Then she points her face, tilting her chin and maximizing her eyes. Her elbows are in opposite directions and her body is curved to minimize the waist and accentuate her breasts.

  I can't help but admire her confidence. It seems to come so naturally to her, almost like breathing and no matter what I do, I can’t make myself feel that way.

  After I hand her back her phone, a smile comes over her face as she looks through the pictures and then she lets out a squeal.

  “He texted me back!”

  18

  Emma

  As soon as Brooke shows me the phone, it takes me a few moments to realize that she’s talking about Liam from the party.

  Immediately, I feel annoyed.

  It was nice to meet you yesterday, Liam texts. Brooke shows me the phone and squeals giddily.

  Yeah, me, too, she texts back.

  She waits for him to say something else, but he doesn't.

  We walk back from the beach and my skin feels salty from the air.

  She asks me how I feel about her possibly asking out Liam and I, of course, tell her that that's totally fine.

  “I just know that you two talked earlier in the night and I wasn't sure if you…”

  She lets her voice trail off.

  I shake my head vigorously.

  “I'm not into guys, right now. Maybe not ever.”

  I tell her this, but it’s a lie. That's the thing about a crush, it happens whether you want it to or not.

  I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a crush, but there is something about Liam that has intrigued me. He has the kind of honesty that seems quite rare nowadays and I appreciate that.

  Brooke points to her phone, but no new text messages arrive.

  “Why would he just text me that and then not say anything else?” she asks.

  “I have no idea.”

  I forgot how much energy women spend analyzing text messages and what men have said or not said in them. Every comma, every emoji, or lack thereof gets analyzed for critical reasoning like an English paper quality standard assessment.

  On the way back to her place, we pop into an Indian restaurant that makes the most delicious curry and put in an order to go.

  While we wait, Brooke obsesses about Liam and I try to change the topic of conversation.

  I pull out my phone and do some more research on D. B. Carter.

  There are a number of Facebook groups devoted to discussing his work and I join all of them. There are also a number of forums that discuss his books and I make an account there to try to get some more information about where I can find him.

  Once the Facebook group moderators accept me, I
scour through the posts. Most of them are dedicated to gushing about the work, but there are a few people who wonder about the writer’s identity and how it is that he can put out so many books so quickly.

  I ask Brooke about that and she shrugs and tells me that it's actually not that uncommon.

  “Really? Do people really publish this many books?”

  “Yes, you'd be surprised. Check out Bella Forrest or just about any other successful indie writer in the romance genre. Even Willow Rose, who writes thrillers. She has more than seventy-five books, at last count. Some people are really prolific and basically that's the thing that builds their brand and gets their readers to come back. Some people publish a book a month and they are quality, good books and their readers appreciate that.”

  “Readers like you?” I ask.

  She shrugs her shoulders and says, “Of course. You know me, I like to read a lot. It seems like nowadays, in the age of Netflix, what's the point of just reading one book if that's what you want to do for entertainment? The author I read has to have a big catalog so that I can really devote myself to their series.”

  I agree with her. I hadn't really thought about the importance of publishing a lot in order to build a brand, but it makes perfect sense.

  There's so much competition and there’re so many writers out there that the way to get people interested in you and to devote their reading time to your book is to have a lot of books published.

  “Have you ever thought about writing anything?” she asks. “I mean besides articles?”

  I shrug.

  It would be a lie to say that I haven’t.

  Of course I have.

  A number of times.

  I actually managed to write about 20,000 words of a novel before I couldn’t figure out what to do with the rest of the story and gave up.

  “I know that you are a really good reporter and that you enjoy that kind of work, but I thought that maybe you would like to write some fiction as well.”

  “Yeah,” I say, shaking my head. “It's kind of crazy to think about but why not, right? I'm just worried that no one would read anything that I would want to write,” I add jokingly.