Lies In Rewind

by Tali Alexander

  “I’m surprised you even remember me or that night. I was going to tell you the truth when you were sober the next morning, but since you decided I wasn’t important enough to see in the morning, I really didn’t have a chance to tell you my age. I don’t even know your full name, so who cares?” I offered as an explanation, trying to pretend I wasn’t affected by him and trembling like a leaf.

  “Who cares? Who cares? I care, Sara! I thought I was coming back to wish you a happy eighteenth birthday. I was praying you didn’t have a boyfriend so I could finally kiss you the way I’ve been wishing I did that night in your room.” He broke our stare and looked down at his feet before pinning me with those unique-colored eyes, which I couldn’t look into. “I have been fantasizing about a fifteen-year-old girl, a fucking child… I’m not some pervert. Look at me when I speak to you!”

  I looked up at him and God, how I wish I never did. God, how perfect my life would be if he never came back and I never saw him again. If he didn’t come back that night, I would have eventually forgotten him and his stupid T-shirt. We must’ve stood there in silence and just stared at each other for ten minutes before he finally let out a breath and said, “I will continue to fantasize about you and I’ll come find you in two years. I will get that kiss and a whole lot more, Sara. You’ll pay for this… We’re not done!”

  He then turned to walk away. Once my brain registered all the info he’d just unleashed on me, I yelled, “Jeff!” I grabbed him by the arm, shouting for him to turn and look at me. “Jeff, I want that kiss now! I’m not waiting for you for two years. I want that kiss now!” I remember when he finally turned around to look at me and at my hand holding onto him, he removed it from his arm harshly and I felt like shit—rejected by him yet again. Why couldn’t I just let him be?

  He must’ve seen the dejected look in my eyes because he found my hand again. He quickly pulled me toward him before one of us changed our minds. I can still see the look on his face; it’s the look of hating yourself for wanting what isn’t yours. He walked us out of that ballroom. He pressed the elevator and practically threw us both in without letting go of me… I know it’s hard to understand, but after not seeing him for almost a year, I didn’t want him to ever let go of me.

  “I can’t leave the party, it’s my birthday.” I tried to reason with him.

  “We’re not leaving. I just need to give us both something to help keep this going until I can properly have you.” That comment made me weak.

  “You mean until you can properly fuck me,” I corrected him. He turned to me and looked at me as if he was about to hit me.

  “How many men have you had, Sara?”

  I had no intention to answer that.

  He asked me again, “How. Many. Have. There. Been?”

  I looked up at his beautiful face, those sharp, multi-colored eyes assessing me. The lawyer in him questioning me as if I would actually tell him the truth. “Lots and lots of men, Jeffery. Too many to count.”

  His upper lip lifted and he smiled a painful smile. “That’s what I thought,” he said, letting go of my hand and turning away from me before pressing the button for the fiftieth floor. His response enraged me.

  “What does that mean? You think I’m a slut?”

  He laughed without turning my way.

  “Tell me!” I demanded.

  The elevator finally came to a stop. He walked out and I was tempted to just take it back up and forget about Jeff. He reached out his hand, which my traitorous body accepted without waiting for my brain’s approval. He pulled me into him, wrapping his arm around my lower back so we were now flush. I couldn’t look up at him. I grew really scared that he would see right through me and my lies.

  “Come.” And once again, my body responded without thinking. I looked into those eyes, those eyes that would haunt me for years to come. As soon as our gaze locked, at that moment nothing existed but him. He lowered his lips to kiss me gently, raining soft kisses on my lips. It was too much for my sixteen-year-old body back then. He held me close…his scent invaded me, his warm touch encompassed me, and those soft lips destroyed me. I became liquid in his arms. “Was I also your first kiss, Sara Klein?” he asked into my mouth.

  When he said those words, tears just rolled down my cheeks, tears that I’d held inside since that morning I found him gone.

  “You don’t have to answer, I know the truth. I will be your first and last in many things. But you need to wait for me. As much as I think I should tell you to forget about us, I can’t and I won’t. I’m sure you have the power to do a lot more damage to me than I’ll ever do to you. We will have our time, Eddie’s little sister. I don’t want to make too many promises, but the things I will do to you, Sara, you have no idea how good they’re going to feel. In two short years, I will blow your whole world away because you’ve already fucked up mine. I promise you that I’ll continue dreaming about you. But for right now, I think you deserve a proper first kiss on your sixteenth birthday.”

  He then gave me the kiss that I can still close my eyes and taste. The kiss that eliminated gravity. The kiss that will forever visit me because no other man would ever kiss me the way Jeffery did that night…that was the kiss that sealed my future. He became my religion and I would sign up to endure anything he would have me undergo just to be kissed like that again. I should’ve known that kiss would be my undoing. It’s the kiss that shaped my life. Just one stupid kiss.

  I look over at Liam, needing to see how he’s coping with the knowledge of the hold Jeff has on me. “Are you okay?” I ask him.

  “I’m ace, love. Keep going, you haven’t stumped me yet. If you told me he fucked you at fifteen, you know I would go find him and cut his knob off, right?”

  I nod. “I know, and I’m starting to like that quality about you. You’re like a vicious brother, only you’re nothing like my brother and I feel closer to you than any other human on earth right now.”

  He pulls himself up and gives me a kiss. Not a passionate stop-the-world kiss, but an I’m-right-here kind of kiss, which is exactly what I need to keep going.

  “Love Bites” by Def Leppard

  He left me that night with just one deadly kiss. I went back up to my party where nobody even noticed I was gone except, of course, my best friend, or to be more exact, my very livid best friend.

  “Sara, what was that? Why was Jeffery so mad at you? Did you guys have a fight?” I recall Emily frantically at my side, questioning me.

  Poor Emily, I lied to her so much about Jeff and what we’d done and the number of times we did it that I didn’t even know where to begin. I decided more lies were the answer.

  “Emily, he was just mad that we can’t fuck until later. He said he came over earlier but I wasn’t home. He wanted us to have sex before the party. I guess he missed me.”

  Emily had that face that I can only describe as shocked and embarrassed rolled into one. I was the one saying all that shit and she was the one blushing.

  “Sorry, your parents wanted to surprise you so I made you come over to my house to help me get dressed.” She looked as if she were the cause of our fight. If she only knew what our fight was really about. If she only knew that I’d just experienced the second best kiss of my life. That I just signed on the dotted line and sold my heart to a perfect stranger I’ve only seen twice, all for a kiss. What would she think of me? What would she think of The Sara Klein if she knew that all I’ve ever had was a kiss?

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll find someone else to screw tonight. He left to go see his girlfriend, I think.” There we go, I loved being able to put that awestruck look on Em’s face.

  “You don’t mind if he sleeps with other girls?” she asked in shock.

  Of course I mind, Emily, but nobody needs to know that. “Of course not, he’s had a few girlfriends since we started fucking last year, I think. Em, I have sex with other guys, too, so it’s not like we’re exclusive or anything.” Emily seemed to contemplate my answer in that i
nnocent little brain of hers. The brain that thinks that people only have sex when they get married and that fathers and mothers love each other dearly and would never ever be unfaithful. I hoped for her sake that she’d find a nice guy that would never prove her wrong.

  She did find that with Louis. But I knew the truth about the real world, my world. I knew men needed lots of women to be happy and no man could be with just one girl. How could they love just one woman their whole life? I figured it would be easier going through life with very little expectations from love and from men in general. Love was not beautiful and pure—love was a joke that little girls believed in.

  “But you like him, right?” Emily continued to question me. She still felt the need to make sense of my character.

  I more than like him, Em. I love him, I wanted to tell her. But I couldn’t let him wreck me. I would be in control of my emotions. I would be in control of my reality, thanks to all my lies, and I would have the exact relationship that The Sara would be proud of. I would pretend to be the whore that every man wished he had, the kind of whore that men like my father left their families for to have weekend meetings with. If I let the world know what kind of good girl I really was, what would I gain? I’d have no one to appreciate it or pay me any attention, so I got the love and attention I craved by telling lies.

  I remember coming out of my thoughts to answer my confused, beautiful friend. The girl that I’d give anything to change places with. “Yeah, I like him; he’s okay. He’s great in the sack and he gives me multiple orgasms, so I guess I like him enough.” There was that shocked look again. God, I should’ve taken my fibs down a notch to make sure I didn’t give poor Emily Marcus a heart attack.

  Liam raises his hand as if asking permission to speak. I smile at him because he’s kinda sorta funny. He takes my smile as clearance to talk.

  “Emily never questioned you? Or wanted to see any evidence about the fibbing?”

  It may be hard to believe, but Em never once called me out on any of my fabricated stories. I think that’s the reason we’re still friends. I answer Liam’s valid question, “Emily only called me out on a lie once, which was followed by us not being on speaking terms for almost two years. It nearly cost us our whole friendship. We only started talking again when Louis couldn’t find her and I spent two days this past July visiting every hospital in New York looking for my best friend because she was missing.”

  I look over at him and notice his eyes are trained out the big window, no doubt thinking of his involvement in Emily’s disappearance and what it must’ve felt like for all of us going crazy not knowing where she was, only to have Louis suffer a heart attack and nearly die.

  “I should’ve brought her back home sooner,” he says, still looking away with remorse written all over his features. “I didn’t know what was happening on the home front for her. I just knew that Louis Bruel, the person I attribute my sister’s death to, was discovered cheating on his wife, the wife that he chose over my sister, and that same wife was delivered to me by fate to do with as I please.”

  Hearing him talk about Em makes me feel silly for liking him as much as I think I do. He’s clearly never going to be over her. Emily is not the type of woman that men forget and move on from. Louis Bruel would start a war for Emily, and this stranger at my side almost gave him reason to. My little epiphany reminds me once again that there is always someone else who gets to have what I want first, someone who stakes a claim before I even get a chance.

  “And you had your way with her, enjoying every second. You fell madly in love with her and now here you are in bed with her psychotic best friend, listening to some stupid story no one has ever heard before, wasting your precious time…when all you really want is another chance with Emily.” I close my eyes because I don’t need to look at him to see how my words affect him. I can’t blame him or his heart for wanting what it wants. After all, who but me knows that feeling best?

  “The time has come for me to show you who I want another chance with,” he says.

  “Doctor! Doctor!” by Thompson Twins

  For the past forty-five days I haven’t thought of anything or anybody but Emily, and I refuse to say her surname. The way she looked when she cried, the way her eyes brightened when she smiled, the taste of her body and scent of her skin, the sounds she made, whimpering as I made her come…and every memory is tainted with her whispering and eventually yelling out his bloody name. What was I thinking? She wasn’t with me that night; she was with her husband. I should’ve stopped, that’s what a gentleman would’ve done. But I wanted revenge. The joke was on me.

  I had no business touching her in the state she was in or wanting her as much as I thought I did. But now, being able to hold this beautiful girl in my arms makes me question every emotion I felt certain of while with Emily. I didn’t feel half of what I feel right now being with Sara. The day she appeared in my hotel, I had some warped adrenaline running through my veins I can only justify as a high a robber gets from stealing and capturing something that never belonged to him.

  This beautiful, broken ballerina at my side makes me question my whole meaningless existence. Is this my destiny? Did Isa, Emily, and even Louis bring me to Sara? Did I need to go through hell to find her? She tells me her love story with Jeffery Rossi, the love of her life, and all I can think is…your life is not over Sara, what if I’m the love of your life, not Jeffery? Maybe Emily and Jeffery and every other bloody mistake were just an obstacle, a test, a trial, an ordeal we needed to conquer to find one another. Twenty-four hours ago, I thought my mission in life was to break apart a marriage to find happiness, and now my only purpose is to put a broken ballerina back together.

  I fancy showing her what she’s doing to me. I want her to know that my body is having a primal reaction to every word she gives me and every touch she bestows upon me. My words don’t mean anything to her because she’s accustomed to fibs and empty promises. I need to make her understand what’s been brewing inside me and that she is the cause of it all.

  I realize I said no touching or kissing, but my rules are rubbish. I can’t not touch her; not touching her is not an option.

  “I’m not planning to fuck, Sara,” I say as I see her roll her eyes and look away from me. She must think this is a rejection again, silly bird. “We won’t be fucking because that’s what ordinary people do. You and I are not ordinary. You, Sara, are extraordinary, and I’m not certain there is a word to describe our bond.”

  She finally looks at me. How have I lived almost thirty years without these eyes looking at me?

  “Will you allow me to love you? How do I make you believe that I won’t go anywhere? I just want to be near you.”

  She closes her eyes as if in pain, as if what I’ve just said physically hurts her. “Thank you, Liam, but I won’t let you make love to me until you know everything. I don’t think you’ll look at me and feel the same way after I tell you the whole truth.”

  “Nothing you can say will make me not want you. We didn’t meet by chance, we’ve been through hell trying to find each other. I wouldn’t feel what I’m feeling if this wasn’t predestined.” I can’t help but kiss her and she can’t prevent herself from kissing me back. I can be content closing my eyes, knowing I’m slowly drowning and erasing every other kiss I’ve ever had before. I’m no longer worried about fancying someone other than this perfect, broken ballerina in my arms.

  “Liam, don’t…you don’t know what you’re saying! I wouldn’t wish someone like me on my worst enemy. Liars like me don’t deserve to be happy. Nobody chooses me; I’m not a good choice.”

  Her words cleave me in two. He did this. He broke this perfect, beautiful creature. She thinks she’s not worth choosing! Punishing herself for telling lies to cover the hurt he caused. I can’t even make love to her until she comprehends how bloody flawless she is to me and that all her faults are what make her my Sara. How could she reckon being unworthy of love?

  “I choose you, Sara Klein.
I choose you now, and I know that I will choose you even more after I know everything about you. You’re right, you should keep going and let me hear about who you reckon is the love of your life,” I say, knowing that nothing she will say to me will make me question wanting to be with her.

  “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell

  Liam’s words and the way his eyes study me make me question every emotion I have ever experienced in my thirty years on this earth. How can a person I’ve known for less than a day compete with someone I’ve known and loved for over a decade?

  And yet my heart doesn’t care. My heart believes every silly word that comes out of his beautiful mouth. My heart brawls with my head, fighting for my chance at happiness. Could this handsome stranger be my happiness? Have I suffered enough and earned him? Can a worthless human like me get a happily ever after?

  Surely not after he learns the truth. Once he knows everything, he will just get up off this bed and this euphoric world of ours and leave me, never looking back.

  People like me don’t get to live out their fantasies; liars like me get exactly what they deserve. I deserved to get my heart broken and ripped apart, and karma doesn’t disappoint, karma always delivers.

  In a way, I wish he already knew everything and would just leave. I could stop wasting time and figure out which way to go to start over…or perhaps not choose to go on at all.

  I continue with the story of my life, knowing that my time with Liam will end very shortly.