Clutching a bathrobe around my naked body, I made my way carefully downstairs. Ollie hadn’t been in the bathroom. In fact, the shower hadn’t been used since the day before. My towel was still in the hamper and no new ones hung on the rack.
I reached the bottom of the stairs and peered down the narrow hallway. “Ollie?”
My voice echoed back at me. I shuffled into the dining room where the remains of our dinner were slowly congealing in their bowls. Two empty wine bottles sat on the table. That explained a few things. I tried to recall how much Ollie had drunk, but his wineglass was half full and I didn’t remember him snagging any from mine. Did that mean I’d downed both bottles by myself?
I kept expecting to find a note somewhere. A little reminder of our night together, something to tell me that I wasn’t going crazy, but there was nothing. I began searching for my phone instead, thinking he might have tried to call. Remembering it was in the car outside; I wondered just how brave I was.
There was no way I was going to make it back up the stairs for clothing, but I wasn’t going outside in a bathrobe either. In the end I compromised and put on an old pair of sweats and a hoodie I found in the tiny laundry room off my kitchen.
The cool air revived me just enough that I became almost violently aware of the sick feeling in my stomach. I made it back inside, phone in hand, just in time to reach the bathroom. I slid across the tile floor to the toilet, knees hitting the edge right before I got sick. I remained in the downstairs bathroom for the rest of the morning, face pressed against the cool toilet seat. It was not how I had pictured my morning.
I called Ollie between bouts of sickness. He hadn’t tried to call me and he didn’t answer his phone. After awhile I began to wonder if the sick feeling in my gut was from the wine or from the horrible suspicions growing inside me.
A soft, familiar hand stroked my hair, interrupting my fitful sleep. I had no idea what time it was. My arms were locked around the toilet, cheek pressed against the smooth, white seat. My eyes fluttered open, fixing on Anna’s familiar face above me.
“God Megan, are you okay? Do I need to take you to the hospital?” Anna laid her cool hand on my burning forehead.
“No, it’s getting better.”
“What happened?”
Emotion crested inside me, a wave of hurt and grief and longing that suffocated every coherent thought in my head. “Jared and I,” I began but didn’t know how to explain what had happened.
“I talked to him,” she told me quietly.
I had never been more grateful for her habitual nosiness than I was at that moment. “Ollie came for dinner last night. Then Jared came and I said some stuff.” I sucked in a deep breath, my eyes stinging with another round of tears. “I was so mean, Anna. I was angry and hurt and I don’t know what else! I’m so confused!”
“What happened with Ollie?”
“I don’t remember everything. I drank a lot.”
“I saw the bottle. You don’t drink wine, Megan. Didn’t you tell him that?”
“He said it was a good kind for people who don’t drink because it tastes so sweet.”
Anna’s lips thinned. “That usually means you drink too much, Megan. What else happened?”
How could I explain the rest? The muddled truths and lies and the things that Ollie had made me believe about Jared. How had I thought that about my friend? How could I have turned so completely against him? What was wrong with me that I could let myself believe he was using me, trying to take advantage of me? It had been so fast, so smooth. I’d wanted to believe that Ollie loved me, wanted me more than anything else. I’d needed that acceptance so desperately. But in the end, what I had really gotten?
“Megan?” Anna prodded.
“I slept with Ollie.” A sob blocked whatever else I might have said.
Anna wrapped her slender arms around me, kneeling in her pristine business suit on my bathroom floor to offer comfort. Gripping her sleeves, I hugged her back, sobbing against her shoulder as everything that had happened in the past few days overwhelmed my emotional defenses.
“He hasn’t called me, Anna! And he won’t answer his phone.”
“I’m so sorry, Megan.” Anna said over and over.
I cried until there were no more tears and then sank slowly into sleep. Anna settled herself on the floor, legs crossed with her back against the bathroom vanity. My head in her lap, she gently stroked my hair. Her presence was a balm to my frayed nerves and battered self-confidence. If I had nothing else, I still had my best friend. And that was something I couldn’t ignore the importance of anymore.
* * *
What must’ve been hours later, I awoke alone on the bathroom floor to the sound of dishes clinking in the kitchen and low voices. I blinked several times until my vision came into focus. Every muscle in my body ached. It was as if I’d been run over by a truck. My belly was hollow and my head was heavy.
Somewhere at the edge of my awareness, I smelled food. The familiar scent of basil and parmesan cheese pesto. Rolling to my knees, I used the toilet to rise unsteadily to my feet. I swayed, fingers gripping the edge of the sink until they cramped. My vision swam briefly before coming back into focus.
The voices rose and I recognized Anna and Jared. Pipes groaned as the water kicked on and I realized they were doing my dishes in the kitchen. Gratitude mingled with embarrassment as I realized what a mess I’d become in such a short time. Would things ever go back to normal? Was there a normal to go back to? It would seem after so many changes between us that our happy, uncomplicated friendships would never be the same.
I took a deep breath and strained my ears to hear what they were saying.
“Now isn’t the time, Jared,” Anna said.
“She deserves to know the truth.”
“You can’t just dump this on her now.” I could practically hear Anna’s hands propped on her hips as I crept through the bathroom door and into the narrow hallway.
“And if he calls her? What if he comes back? I’m not going to leave her open to whatever he’s got planned next. I’ll kill him first!”
I laid my hand on the cool wall, drawing myself farther forward, desperate to understand what was obviously a conversation about me.
“You have to take a step back, Jared. You know you can’t be objective about anything when it comes to Megan. Not now, not with everything that’s happened in the last few days.”
“To hell with being objective! I’m going to protect her. I didn’t before. I let it go. Look what happened. If she’d had all the information…” There was a long pause, and I heard Jared take a deep breath. “If I hadn’t hurt her like I did. If I had been honest, this might never have happened.”
“I’m telling you,” Anna argued. “Giving her this kind of information right now is a bad thing.”
“What kind of information?” I stepped farther down the hall to the kitchen doorway. “What else could possibly go wrong?”
Anna whirled around, hand pressed to her chest. “Holy cow, Megan! I thought you were still resting.”
Resting was not precisely what I would’ve called crashing on the bathroom floor, but I let it slide. Moving farther into the kitchen, I took a seat at the tiny round table.
“Are you hungry? Jared stopped for pasta and pesto on his way over.” Anna placed a bowl of chilled fusilli with basil pesto on the table before me.
My eyes lifted, finding Jared’s calm blue gaze. He looked better than he had the night before. He’d shaved and changed clothes. Dressed in his typical gym “uniform” of black athletic pants and T-shirt, his solid presence was a familiar balm.
His expression softened and he shifted his stance. It was as though he were fighting the urge to reach out to me. I would have been lying if I said that I didn’t want him to. I needed that, the reassurance of his embrace, of knowing that he was real. How could I have been so blind?
“What information?” I asked, aiming my question at him this time.
His jaw
tightened, the muscles in his cheeks bunching as he gritted his teeth and tilted his head. His gaze dropped to rest on a plain folder lying innocently on my tabletop. I hadn’t noticed it when I sat down. Now it seemed to grow before my eyes, reaching mythic proportions in seconds.
“No.” Anna reached for the folder.
Adrenaline spiked in my blood and despite my weakened reflexes, I snatched it out of her reach.
“Megan, don’t put yourself through this,” Anna begged. “Not right now.”
“Why not? What else do I have to lose?” I asked hoarsely.
It was sort of odd, the way I had already decided to accept as fact that Ollie had been lying to me for reasons I still didn’t quite understand. I didn’t have any ironclad proof. Not yet anyway. Nothing had been said, and there wasn’t any evidence that he hadn’t just spent the night and then needed to go home in the morning. His phone could’ve been dead. It’s not like he had a phone charger at my house. Maybe he didn’t even realize it yet. Maybe he was somewhere across the city wondering why I hadn’t had the decency to call him after asking him to spend the night.
But that wasn’t the case and I knew it. Something deep inside my gut told me Ollie wasn’t what I thought. My heart knew it’d been betrayed, and my body knew it’d been used. I couldn’t explain it, but I knew it anyway.
So what did I have to lose by reading whatever sat inside that folder?
I pushed the pasta aside and laid the folder on the scarred tabletop before me. It was cold in the kitchen and gooseflesh covered my arms. A chill slipped down my spine and settled in my bones. I sniffed, trying to get a deep breath. My tangled hair fell over my shoulder, and I pushed it absently out of my way. Was there any point in putting this off?
Groggy, hung over, and emotionally spent, it took me a minute to realize what it was I was looking at when I opened the folder.
“It’s a background check,” Jared offered huskily. “It’s nothing I wouldn’t run on any person that applied for a job at the gym. We have an account with one of those internet companies.”
“It’s all public record,” Anna added softly.
Ollie’s green eyes stared at me from a slightly goofy looking drivers’ license photo. I ignored his basic vital statistics in favor of other things. He had a St Louis address in South City just like he’d claimed. But beside the address, there was something else I’d never considered to be an issue.
Anna touched my shoulder. “He’s married, Megan.”
“Her name is Carissa.” I almost choked on the name.
“He’s been married for almost sixteen years, honey.” Anna’s voice was gentle. “From what we can figure out, he meets women on the Internet, carries on with them for a few months and then ends the relationship without them ever knowing the truth.”
It was too much information. More than I’d needed and certainly more than I’d wanted to know. I felt stupid, as if I’d been taken for the worst kind of fool while trying to believe the best about somebody. I’d thought he was like me, just a little lonely and uncertain about how to meet the right person.
But that wasn’t what he was at all.
“Megan?”
Anna was about to go into one of her lectures. I could tell. Her intentions weren’t bad. She was about to try and convince me that this was just one of those things I couldn’t control. That I should be glad I found out now before it went further and that it wasn’t my fault. I leapt up from the table, wanting nothing more than to flee.
“Don’t, Anna. Just don’t, okay?”
I didn’t care about any of those things. I didn’t care whose fault it was or whether or not I’d found out before making any more commitments or decisions. Those things just didn’t matter anymore.
The bottom line was that Ollie had lied to me and I’d believed every word of it. Why? Forget the personal stuff about him. Most of those details were probably true. The only part that had been effectively left out was Carissa. It was the other stuff that hurt so deeply. The things he’d manipulated me into believing about my friends, about Jared. How had I been so easily convinced that Jared had a whole list of bad intentions in store for me?
“Go home, Anna. I need to be alone for awhile.”
There wasn’t much strength behind my words, but she could tell that I meant them. Her full lips pursed and she gathered up her things before wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug.
“I love you, Megan,” she told me softly. “I’m only a phone call away.”
“I know,” I told her tightly, trying desperately to hold onto what was left of my composure. “I’ll be fine.”
Her high heels clicked across my faded black and white kitchen tile before she disappeared into the hallway. I heard her clack over the hardwood entry before the front door clicked shut behind her and I was left all alone with Jared.
He set aside the damp kitchen towel he’d been holding and reached for his keys. Out of habit, he slid the ring over his index finger. I watched his strong, tanned hand as his slender fingers fiddled with his car key. The dusting of gold hair on his arms gleamed in the fluorescent lights overhead. His jaw was set, teeth clenched and mouth in a carefully neutral expression.
Pausing, he leaned back against my countertop. Slender, yet tightly muscled, everything about Jared was understated. There was nothing in his manner that suggested arrogance or pride in his physique. He never preened to an audience or used his good looks to gain an advantage. Even his facial expressions were honest.
“I’m sorry, Megan.”
His voice was rough, as if he was trying to keep his emotions tightly held in check. I didn’t know what he might be feeling inside. Anger at me for being so gullible or anger toward Ollie for duping his friend; it could’ve been anything.
“When did you find out?” I finally managed to ask.
“Saturday.”
I exhaled in a rush. He’d known for almost four days. Four days. How could he keep something like that from me for four days?
“Anna called me Friday night.” Jared paused to clear his throat. “She was upset you hadn’t texted her about where you were, so I agreed to do some checking to see what was up with this guy. She just wanted you to be safe.”
“And you?” I managed to say. “What did you want?”
“I told you Sunday what I wanted.” His voice grew stronger. “I said it again yesterday.” His key ring swung around and around his index finger, creating a metallic rhythm that punctuated his words and expression.
“You knew what Ollie was when you said those things to me. You knew and you didn’t tell me.”
The keys stopped and his expression turned stormy. “Would you have listened? What would you have said if I told you Ollie was married and just using you like the player you’d accused me of being? What do you think you would have said if I told you that your stupid list hadn’t protected you from the very thing you’d been avoiding? That it had never protected you?”
I reeled back a step, stunned by the venom in his words.
“You know, I always wondered,” Jared began bitterly. “Did you create that list to eliminate guys that weren’t good enough for you, or just to eliminate me?”
He left after that, but I didn’t see him go. I sank back into my kitchen chair and stared at the damning information on the table before me, unable to do any more than absorb the things that were happening.
Chapter Eleven
When recovering from severe emotional trauma, it is possible to sit in the same position for hours on end and do nothing more than carefully examine small, superficial parts of your world. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can do. Your heart needs a quiet moment in which to start the healing process and your mind must begin to reflect.
Maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not. But that’s what I did for the thirteen hours following my discovery of Ollie’s dual lives. I burrowed my way into my overstuffed chair with a much-washed and somewhat threadbare fleece blanket and stared at the texture of the c
henille on the arm of the chair.
Sometime during the small hours of the morning, when I could no longer make out the fabric’s details in the darkness, I took to gently running my fingertips over the soft, bumpy contours. By the time pink dawn kissed the horizon and the pale rays of morning sunlight began to filter through the blinds into my living room, I had slipped into a fitful doze.
What seemed like moments later I was jarred awake by the jaunty Marimba of my iPhone. My whole body jerked in response, as if I were conditioned to leap up and answer that ring. As if I still wanted to talk to the person I knew waited on the other end.
There was no doubt in my mind that he had a plausible excuse ready to go. And really, if Jared and Anna hadn’t stepped in, would I have been unwilling to buy it? Why wouldn’t I want to hear his excuse and forgive him? I’d just slept with him. Any woman would be dying to know that they hadn’t taken that irreversible step in error. We wanted affirmation, someone to tell us that we were the one, the only one.
But I did know. And there was no taking that back.
Knees creaking in protest, I climbed out of my nest in the chair and stretched. For the first time in forever, I had no plan. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I went to work.
After so many days of emotional ups and downs, it was a sweet kind of relief to lose myself in the familiar rhythm of work. I didn’t bother to change clothes. I didn’t have to. That’s one of the perks of not only working for yourself, but working out of a home office. Ratty sweatpants and an ancient hoodie are perfectly acceptable business attire.
My inbox was flooded with client emails, reports, requests and all sorts of correspondence that I’d been neglecting while immersed in what had turned out to be a pseudo relationship.
I started slow, but it didn’t take long to get back in the swing of things. I ran statements and reports, sank into the welcome monotony of stuffing envelopes, and put together three large boxes to take to the post office.
Mr. Wonderful Lies Page 12
