The Liar

He led me to his room, where he sat down on his bed and I sat on his desk chair. I leaned back in it, just to keep more of a comfortable distance from him. We shot glances at each other, feeling awkward, wondering what to say or what to do.

His name was Gabe. I hooked up with him at the beginning of September, and we sorta had a “thing” going on for a while. By “thing,” I guess I could say it was a little romantic. I went to his place to cook with him, and we’d watch DVD’s together. I lent him an entire season of The X-Files, season six. He’d watch it and tell me about it as we chatted on AIM every few nights. Shortly after Team Millennia auditions, however, we stopped talking, and I knew I deliberately ignored his IM’s, texts, and phone calls. I felt like I had to go see him one more time and possibly give him some kind of explanation as to why I disappeared.

“How’ve you been?” he asked me.

“I’ve been good,” I said. “I started my first day at Promod last night. That went all right. And overall I’ve been having a pretty okay start to my junior year in college. How have you been?”

“Busy, really busy. Planning a bunch of club stuff and studying.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, Mr. Nurse.”

He chuckled. “So you’ve been having fun? Going to any parties or anything?”

“Yeah I went to one just this past week. I went to one two weeks ago and vomited my guts out and missed the very first day of class the next day, so I didn’t want to drink at this one. But my friend did try to make me drink though. Funny story I guess.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Supposedly I took three shots. But really, the only one I took was my second one, which was of something a lot weaker than what would’ve been the first and third ones. For the first one, I switched my cup with my chaser cup and drank that, and when everyone went for their chasers, I put my chaser cup down next to the cup with the actual shot, switch them around a bit, and drank out of my chaser cup again. I dumped the shot cup in the sink. No one noticed.

“For my third shot that I got away with,” I continued, “my friend had already shoved a shot cup into my one hand and a chaser cup into my other. He was holding his own cups, and as he was trying to convince me to drink my shot, he was getting all in my face, literally. Our eyes were pretty much locked, and I used that opportunity to dump my shot into his shot cup. Then I pretended to give in and downed my empty shot right away and ‘chased’ it before he could peak inside my cup. For that one though, some of his friends saw what I did.”

“Really? Did they say anything?” Gabe asked.

“I hope so. That’s kinda the point isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you can lie and get away with it, thus accomplishing nothing, or you can lie and later confess about it, or find some way to make sure that the truth is revealed. That way, you’ll get your point across. Everyone lies for a reason, but that reason only matters if the lie gets exposed. Since my saying ‘no’ is not good enough for my friend, he needs to know that I’m willing to lie to get my way, and then he won’t try so hard anymore. If no one ever tells him about what I did, I’ll have to do it myself next time.”

Gabe nodded solemnly.

“By the way,” I said, “I’ve been eyeing your desk and your DVD collection. I don’t see my X-Files. You didn’t lose it did you?” I forced an awkward laugh.

“Nah, it’s right here.” He went to his desk and lifted my X-Files up from under a neat pile of papers. “Here.”

I grabbed it and glanced over it. Still in good condition. I held it under my arm and smiled at him. “Thanks.”

We continued to chat until there nothing else to talk about. Following a minute of silence and fleeting eye contact, he beckoned me to come to him. I asked him why, and he said to just come up to him. So I did, and he wrapped his arms around my waist and pushed up against me. We faced each other with a few mere inches separating us. He looked at my lips occasionally and I looked at his, only to turn away. But the longer he had his arms wrapped around my waist, the more I wanted to give in.

“I can’t,” I whimpered. “No...”



Horny at 1 AM. What was a college freshman like me to do? Booty call.

I set out onto the street in my sweats and a sweater, keys in hand. It was cold and wet outside, and my legs were still shaking. They felt weak, and my heart pounded in my chest. I tried to keep myself warm, but I knew it wasn’t the cold. It was the anxiety. What I was doing, and why I was doing it, the reasons scared me.

My phone started vibrating in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a private number calling me. I figured it was him. I answered the call, and the voice on the other line struck me as familiar, but not in a way that I had expected.

“Hi Brian,” the voice said. “Where are you?”

“Hi, uh...”

“You’re not inside your dorm sleeping, are you? I know because I asked one of your hallmates if you were in room, and she said she saw you leaving somewhere. You know who this is?”

I stopped breathing. The voice, it couldn’t be. But it was.

“It’s me Brian. It’s Trung.”

I had no response.

“Brian, why have you been lying to me? You were about to go cheat on me again, weren’t you?”



“I might be getting back with my ex!” I blurted out to Gabe. The lock of his arms around my waist immediately released and I pulled away. Taking a moment to breathe, I sat back down in my chair and rocked back.

“You are?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that’s great. Which ex? And how did it happen?”

“It’s not Trung; it’s my most recent one, Ranier,” I answered, “and well, two weekends ago, during the same weekend as Team Millennia auditions, he came down to visit. But it was a little unexpected. Originally he had planned on hanging out with some other guy in San Diego, but they had some kind of problem at the last minute. Since it was the night before Ranier’s flight, he couldn’t really refund it, so he planned on going anyway and asked me to come pick him up from San Diego. I drove him back up to Irvine, and we hung out whenever I wasn’t practicing with my group audition mates. The very first night he stayed over, we tried to split the bed, but somehow—oops! We ended up making out. And then we spent the next day like how we spent our days together when we were together, cuddling and watching TV, kissing, all that stuff, y’know.

“Now we’ve been chatting on webcam every night and talking on the phone. Just like how it was when we were together; it was a long distance relationship after all. So yeah, Ranier and I are pretty much together again.”

I stood up and shrugged. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you that my ex and I have been talking again for the last two weeks, and that’s why I’ve been ignoring you.”

He sighed. “Alright, it’s cool.”



I found a table outside near some vending machines to sit down on as I pressed my cellphone into my ear.

“Brian, please,” Trung begged, “can you explain to me why you did it?”

“Look, you caught me. Again. I lied to you, and I was about to go cheat, again. Again. Don’t you think you should break up with me?”

“No, Brian, can you just explain why you did it?”

“Maybe so we can fucking break up already, Trung!”

“We can work this out as long as you’re willing to talk to me!”

“How the fuck are we going to work it out? I’ve cheated, I’m still cheating. Once a cheater, always a cheater, right? Don’t you see Trung? We can’t last, not like this. If you had any amount of logic in you, you could see that the best option is to just break up with me and move on. Again, I lied, and you caught me.”

“Brian, please. There’s a still a chance with us. If there’s any part of you, any part that still believes in us, we can make this work Brian, please. I believe, and I need you to believe too. Can you just do that? Even a little bit?”

“You’re not giving up, are you?” I sighed and rested my head on the table. “This is going to be one long phone call, isn’t it? I don’t know why bother. I doubt we’ll even last until our one-year anniversary or Christmas.”



Gabe and I made more small talk as he walked me out to my car, but before I had to go, I knew there was one more thing I had to tell him.

“I’m sorry Gabe. But you know what, we wouldn’t have worked out together anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a liar. I’m not afraid to lie, and I’ll make sure that I lie in a way that hurts. Whoever goes out with me would probably be one of the unluckiest guys in the world.”

“That can’t be true.”

“The story about my ex, and our getting back together. Did you believe any of it?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“No, don’t. I made it up.”

Gabe stuttered. “Wait, so, uh, what? What does that make us?”

“Figure it out.”

We shared one last gaze before I unlocked my car and got inside. As I turned on my engine, he started walking away back inside, and I pulled out of my parking space. Once I was back onto the streets, I reached inside my jacket and pulled out my X-Files. I went through each DVD to make sure that they were all in working condition. No scratches. Good. I got what I came for.