The Lie

by Chad Kultgen

  I said, “She’s doing pretty good,” with just enough hesitation to leave open the possibility for Heather to interpret what I said as indicating a hidden problem with the relationship.

  I said, “How about you? How’s the boyfriend?”

  She said, “We haven’t been together for a while now.”

  I said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She said, “Don’t be. It’s all for the best. I kind of found out he was like a serious asshole in the end.”

  I said, “I see.”

  And then we didn’t say much until we got to Nick and Sam’s. Once we got there we were seated at the same table we ate at when I took her there. I wondered if that was coincidence or if she had called ahead and asked for the table specifically or something. She didn’t mention anything about it so I assumed it was coincidence.

  After we sat down and ordered there was a little more small talk. She asked me how my classes were going and pretended to care and I asked her how her sorority shit was going and pretended to care. I wanted to just flat-out ask her why she decided to take me to dinner out of the blue, but I knew that would probably make me seem desperate or overly anxious to her, which might turn her off, and then whatever chance I might have had to get her interested in me again would be blown. So I waited.

  It was sometime just after we got our food and started eating that she started the conversation that would ultimately lead to everything going down the shitter. She said, “So, like, I know you’re probably like, ‘Why’d she take me to dinner?’ and I don’t know if you’ve been thinking about me at all since we saw each other and like had that conversation or anything, but I’ve been thinking about you like a lot.”

  I said, “I’ve thought about you, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like, what have you thought about when you think about me?”

  “You’re the one who took me out to dinner. I think it’s on you to tell me what you’ve been thinking about first.”

  “I don’t know. I guess like I’ve just been thinking a lot about how things used to be when we first started going out and like I miss that, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what have you been thinking?”

  “The same thing pretty much. I miss how things were, how they used to be.”

  “And do you think that like we could ever have that again or…”

  “Are you asking me to get back together with you?”

  “I don’t know. Is that what you want?”

  “I’m asking you here. I never wanted us to be apart. You were the one who ended it. So now I’m asking you if you want to get back together.”

  “What if I do?”

  “Then that’s another whole conversation, but if you’re not absolutely sure this is what you want, it’s not even worth starting that next conversation.”

  “Okay, I’m sure. It’s what I want, Kyle. What do we do now?”

  “And you’re sure this isn’t just because you and your boyfriend broke up and you’re just lonely?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, if we’re talking about me breaking up with Erin and us getting back together, you have to be more sure than that. I don’t want to break her heart for you and then two months from now you’re cheating on me with some other frat guy.”

  “I promise you that will never happen again. I know I never really said I was sorry for it, but I am. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my entire life and like if I could take it back, Kyle, I totally would.”

  “I know.”

  “So are we like a couple again or what? How does this work?”

  I was surprised I was thinking rationally at that point at all. I wanted to take Heather back to my dorm room and kiss her and hug her and fuck her and wake up with her and fuck her again and just spend the whole day in bed with her and not think about anything else. But the situation demanded some practical thinking. I actually thought to myself that I might need some leverage if I was going to get back together with her. I actually planned out what I thought was a minor power play. I was so fucking stupid. Heather had me wrapped around her fucking finger and I thought I was gaining some kind of psychological advantage by saying, “So everything’s out in the open now—how you feel, how I feel—but I’m not entirely sure this is what I want. I’m going to need some time to think about this, and if we are going to get back together, I’m obviously going to have to talk to Erin.”

  She said, “I know. I don’t want to rush you or anything. You have to like be completely comfortable with this, too. So you do what you have to do.”

  We finished eating and talked a little more about the possibility of us getting back together. At one point she said, “I promise you if we get back together it’s going to be the best makeup sex of your life.” I’m pretty sure I got an immediate hard-on.

  At the end of the night she drove me back to McElvaney and said, “Do you want me to come in?”

  And I fucking wanted that more than anything, but I remembered how Heather made me feel when she cheated on me. And I realize it was all semantics if I was going to break up with Erin anyway, but I never wanted to make anyone feel like that, least of all her. And this didn’t tip me off at all, by the way. I wouldn’t fuck Heather because I remembered her making me feel like I wanted to die when she sucked some other guy’s dick. That didn’t even make me pause for a second and think about the fact that I was about to get right back into the shitstorm with her.

  So Heather left. I told her I’d call her in the next few days after I had thought about everything and decided what I wanted to do. I sat on my bed for about thirty minutes, thinking alternately about fucking Heather and breaking up with Erin. My roommate wasn’t around—I think he was rushing or pledging or something—so I took the opportunity to jerk off once to calm myself down. I was pretty worked up from thinking about having sex with Heather and I knew I needed to be rational.

  It didn’t take me that long to figure it out. Like a dipshit, I decided to get back together with Heather. I knew it was going to be one of the worst and most difficult things I had ever done, but I had to break up with Erin and be with Heather. For some sick fucking reason I thought that was the only way I could be really happy, like I was when Heather and I first started dating.

  And once my decision was made, I started getting nervous and thought I might get scared and not be able to break up with Erin if I waited until the next morning, so I walked across campus to her apartment and rang the doorbell.

  Erin answered it and said, “Hey. You and Brett called it early, huh? Weren’t there any skanks for him to nail? Or did he already nail them all and call it a wrap?”

  I walked in and sat down on the couch and said, “We have to talk about something,” and that same feeling that seeped down my neck and into my gut when Heather told me she sucked another guy’s dick came back. My face didn’t get hot like it did with Heather, but my stomach felt horrible and I started sweating.

  Erin said, “What’s wrong? You look terrible. Are you okay?”

  I said, “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  She said, “You know you can tell me anything. I’ll love you no matter what.”

  There was a split second where I thought I wouldn’t do it, a split second where I thought I could stay with Erin and be happy forever, a split second where I saw the mistake I was about to make and understood I didn’t have to make it, but only a split second. It felt like I was jumping off a cliff as I said, “Erin, I love you, but I can’t stay in this relationship anymore.”

  She couldn’t even talk. She just sat down next to me on her couch. She didn’t cry or ask any questions or anything. She just sat there. I felt like I had to explain myself and I felt like she deserved the truth.

  I said, “I know this is really shitty, but I didn’t go out with Brett tonight. I went to eat dinner with Heather. She wants to get back together.”

  Finall
y she said, “And you want to, too?”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  She said, “Wow. After all the shit she put you through, ignoring you for her sorority, doing drugs behind your back, cheating on you, you’re going to get back together with her?”

  I said, “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  She said, “Don’t be sorry. You can’t help how you feel. I just don’t get it. I love you more than anything. I thought you loved me—”

  I said, “I do.”

  She said, “Well, not enough to choose me over a cock-sucking sorority whore. I’m sorry. That was…I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I said, “It’s okay.”

  She said, “No, it’s not. This is someone who’s obviously very important to you, someone you love. I shouldn’t have said it. I just want to ask you what it was about me that was never good enough. I could kind of feel it through our whole relationship. I didn’t think it had anything to do with Heather, though. Was it always her?”

  I said, “I don’t know. I love you, Erin, I really do. You’re an amazing person, it’s just—I don’t know, it’s not the same.”

  She said, “The same as Heather, you mean?”

  I said, “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  And then she started crying and I wanted to crawl into a fucking hole and die. She had been nothing but loving and kind to me for our entire relationship and that’s how I repaid her. Erin was really an amazing person and I’m sad she’ll never be in my life again. That might be my biggest regret of all of this shit, that she hates me more than anyone else at this point.

  As she cried she got up off the couch and went into her bedroom. Just before she shut the door she said, “I’m going to stay in here. Can you please just get whatever you have in my apartment and leave? I’ll send you anything that’s in the bedroom.”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  She shut the bedroom door and I got my toothbrush, an extra pair of tennis shoes I kept at her apartment, and my Dune collector’s edition DVD. I went back to her bedroom door and said, “Erin, I’m sorry.” I just heard her crying inside. She didn’t say anything back so I left.

  I walked back to McElvaney and over the course of the walk I went from feeling like a douchebag to feeling like a man reborn. It was surprising to me how quickly the guilt from dumping Erin subsided when I started thinking about Heather and getting excited about us being a couple again.

  When I got back to McElvaney I took a shower and planned on going to sleep and waiting a few days to call Heather so I could maintain whatever power I thought I had over her in the situation, which was less than none. Instead, as soon as I got back to my room from the showers I called her. I said, “So I made my decision.”

  She said, “And…”

  I said, “I think you should come over tonight and I’ll tell you in person.”

  She said, “Seriously? Oh my God. I’m like so happy. I love you so much.”

  I said, “I love you, too. Now get over here as fast as you can. My roommate’s gone. We got the whole shitty dorm room to ourselves.”

  She said, “Okay, I need to take a shower and then I’ll be over.”

  I said, “Okay, I’ll be waiting.”

  She said, “Kyle, I love you.”

  I said, “I love you, too,” and despite all the things that were wrong with the relationship we were about to start up again the words felt right in a way they hadn’t since I last said them to Heather.

  chapter twenty

  I was like so excited. I mean a little part of me had a small amount of not like regret but almost like buyer’s remorse or something, you know? Like I had thought about getting back together with Kyle and everything and it was definitely what I wanted but I just didn’t like expect it to happen so fast. I mean I really thought after that dinner there would be a few days of him kind of thinking about it and a few days for me to kind of think about it even though I basically told him I wanted to get back together that night and everything, but he called me that night and was like, “I broke up with Erin and I want you to come over,” so I pretty much had to. I couldn’t really have been like, “Uh, hang on a second, I still thought I was going to get a few more days before we jumped back into things.” I mean I was basically the one who initiated the whole thing. I wish I had said that to him now, but that night I guess I was just a little nervous to be getting right back into another relationship and really when you think about it, it was like the same relationship I was already in less than a year ago. But then the alternative was like hooking up with random frat guys, which didn’t really seem all that appealing to me for obvious reasons.

  I was kind of excited to have sex with Kyle that night. I mean he was still like the best sex I’d ever had and I knew he would go down on me. I didn’t really for sure know if I was completely ready to have sex after the thing with Brian and Josh, but I didn’t feel nervous about it when I was walking out of the Kappa house to go to McElvaney, so I thought that was like a pretty good sign.

  When I got to his dorm, he let me in and gave me a big hug. I know it sounds stupid but it felt so good, like I could feel how much he loved me in that hug. I knew I had missed him because I was thinking about him so much in the weeks before we got back together, but I guess I didn’t know how much I missed him until that hug. He kept on hugging me for like a minute, then he kind of pulled back and looked in my eyes and was like, “I love you, Heather.”

  I was like, “I love you, too.” It felt good to say because I knew I really meant it.

  He was like, “I don’t ever want to have to lose you again. Promise me I won’t lose you again.”

  When he said that I thought it was kind of weird, like a little too much too soon, you know? I mean I know we just got back together and everything and it wasn’t like we were able to take anything slow or anything because we had already been a couple for like a year, so getting back together was pretty much starting where we left off, but he was basically saying he wanted to be together like forever. I loved him and everything, but we had literally been a couple again for like less than an hour and he was talking about never being apart again. It kind of freaked me out but not that much and I was just like, “I promise.”

  Then he kissed me and I remembered what a good kisser he was. It was like he actually liked to kiss. Brian never did, or if he did it was only to get me in the mood to fuck him. Kyle actually liked kissing and you could totally tell. We made out for like twenty minutes and then he started taking off my shirt. It was kind of weird at first—like I started thinking about that night with Brian and Josh—but I didn’t really want to make Kyle think something was wrong. I mean it was our first night back together. I knew that we were going to have to have sex. So I just kind of tried to put it out of my mind and for the most part it wasn’t that hard to do.

  Once we were naked it actually got a lot better for me. Kyle was like really gentle and liked to cuddle and be like really intimate with how he would touch me and everything, which was like the exact opposite of Brian. So I wasn’t really thinking about Brian. At one point I did start thinking about if Kyle wanted to fuck doggy style I didn’t think I’d be able to do that. I mean any position really with a guy behind me was going to be a problem, you know? And I also was kind of thinking that giving a blowjob might be a problem, too. But after Kyle fingered me a little and I was like jerking him off a little I actually got really turned on by how into it Kyle was; like even more than his hugs and kisses and everything I could tell he really loved me by the way he touched me and that was a huge turn-on.

  So I didn’t really mind going down on him. And once I actually had his dick in my mouth it was so different from Brian that I was fine with it. Brian never really trimmed his pubes and he had like a pretty big bush that wasn’t necessarily gross, but it wasn’t all that appealing. I didn’t know if Kyle ever trimmed his pubes, but he always seemed to be really neat and clean.

  So after I sucked him off a little he went down on me, and at that point like a
ny apprehension I had about having sex with Kyle was gone. I really had forgotten how good he was at going down on me and once he started I was seriously more horny than I had been in a long time and pretty much all I could think about was fucking him.

  He was sitting up in his bed and I kind of sat in his lap so we were like face-to-face and I just rode him kind of slowly. He held me really tight and kissed me the whole time. He didn’t even grab my boobs that much or anything. It was like he just wanted to get close to me and it made it really nice. I think that night probably more than any other with Kyle I really got to know what it felt like to be completely loved.

  I didn’t get off, but I didn’t think that was a big deal. I mean given everything that had happened the last time I had sex. I figured at some point I would be able to again and feeling Kyle cum inside me was almost as good as if I had gotten off anyway. After we finished I lay down beside him and he kissed me on the forehead and then like rolled around behind me and spooned me.

  Even after all the shit Kyle put me through and even though I know what a complete asshole he is now, I think I’ll always remember that night, lying in his shitty bed in a shitty dorm room in McElvaney Hall, as one of the safest feelings I’ve had in my life.

  The next morning I woke up in like exactly the same position I fell asleep in. Kyle still had his arms around me. I kind of turned over and watched him sleep for a few seconds before he woke up. It’s weird to think about now, but I really did love him, like I mean a lot, you know?

  We went and got breakfast that morning and then we went to NorthPark mall and just walked around. He went to Forever 21 with me and the Vera Wang store even though I knew he didn’t want to and he didn’t complain once and he held my hand the whole time, like he didn’t want to let go of me. It was a really great feeling to have a guy who I knew loved me again. I was like seriously happy.