All the Lies - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,4

this. I never thought that there would be a person who intuitively understood every part of me. Then he came along and suddenly all of these things that I thought were important no longer were. I thought that he felt the same way.

Tears start to gather and I blink to make them go away.

A big gulp forms somewhere in the back of my throat.

I'm crying because I caught him cheating on me, but it's more than that. There's this dissipation of trust. There's this feeling that this life that you have been living for two years is nothing but a lie.

“Emma, please,” Alex says, tugging on my hand. “Please don't cry. I hate to see you cry.”

I pull my hand away and wipe a rogue tear with the knuckle of my index finger.

“I can't believe that you've been lying to me for so long,” I say quietly. “Our whole relationship is a lie.”

“No, it's not,” Alex says, shaking his head.

I cock my head and look into his eyes, unconvinced.

“I know that I shouldn’t have been doing this. I know that I should have cut things off with Jen a long time ago, but you have to believe me when I say that it didn't mean anything. It was just a stupid physical thing. We have been doing it for three years up until we met. I broke things off for about a year. Then we were both working late one night and it just happened again.”

“So, you broke things off at first?” I ask, my voice cracking.

“Yes, when we met,” Alex says urgently.

“And then when things got a little bit too boring with us, you just went right back to her?” I ask.

He reaches over to me, but I turn away from him.

This time, however, I don't just pull away. I forcibly remove his hands off of my shoulders.

“No, that's not what happened. It was just stupid. It was something we did for a while and it's just like… a bad habit.”

“Well, in my opinion, cheating is not the same thing as smoking. The problem is that you never gave it a second thought about what it would do to me. You didn't care how much it would hurt me. You don't care about any of that.”

“I did,” Alex says, his voice getting more desperate. “I still do.”

“No, you don't,” I say with a sigh.

Before he can say another word, the door swings open and Jen walks in. She’s tall and elegant with hair that looks like she has just walked off the red carpet. On the outside, she is a much better match for Alex than I am. When Jen stands next to him, I can almost see that glitzy, airbrushed magazine photograph of the two of them, smiling with their big pearly whites from ear to ear. Hell, they would even look good on the cover of Coast.

“Emma, I just wanted to stop by and apologize. This was very disrespectful and a terrible thing to do. I'm really sorry. It should have never happened.”

I give her a slight nod. As a woman who writes for a living, it is not lost on me that her veiled apology is not really an apology at all. There is a detachment, not just in her tone but also in her choice of words.

“I promise you that this will never happen again. From now on, our relationship will be strictly professional,” Jen adds.

“I don't really care,” I say quietly but sternly. “You can do whatever you want because I'm not going to be with someone who treats me like this.”

Jen nods and looks at me with sympathy but also admiration.

I've had enough of this. I take a deep breath and walk toward the door, but when Jen reaches out and touches me with her manicured fingers, my whole body shudders.

“Don't touch me,” I snap.

“Please, Emma, I'm sorry. I just have to ask you a small favor.”

“You want to ask me a favor?” I parrot her words back to her, flabbergasted.

“Please don't tell anyone. This whole thing is so stupid and Alex and I should have never happened. I love my husband and my family. I don't know what I would do if I were to lose that.”

Not knowing how to respond to that, I just walk out.

4

Emma

I keep my tears at bay on the way down the elevator and in the lobby. But as soon as the brightness of the sun hits my face, all the tears come rushing out. They burst