It All Started with a Lie

Chapter 25

"Cassie Marie said he was so big, he couldn't even fit all the way."

I just wasn't with the right woman. And suddenly I understand why she was so annoyed when Cassie Marie asked to be her partner for their psyc project.

I watch her all but explode as they continue to gush about me and I am amazed she has kept her temper. If anyone said the same about her, I am not sure I could do the same. The thought of her with another man pisses me off. Fucking James passes me every Monday on my way to class and I spend the entirety of my greek history class trying to convince myself not to kill him when I see him next week.

When she is so red that she could stop oncoming traffic, and her eyes are so dark they no longer look green, she clenches her jaw, I know her teeth must hurt from how hard she grit them, she says, "He listens to Taylor Swift." And my blood runs cold.

But I try to ignore it because this is what I deserve for getting her kicked out of the sorority. I click off of the video but when I do my music resumes and Taylor Swift plays through my earbuds. I try to shake off the feeling but I can't help but wonder what else she said about me, and does she find it unattractive what I listen to.

I can't stop myself from resuming the video when my next set is up. "And he sings," she tells them before listing off a few traits my father would beat me for. That my favorite color is purple, a girls color, that I can't drink my coffee black, that I refuse to let her kill spiders and insist she let me take them inside.

Thankfully the sweat and flush from my workout hides my embarrassment and my 'brothers' don't question a thing. The rest of the girls laugh at my behavior but I only watch her reaction and for the first time I cannot read her. Does she find me that unmanly?

Everything I have worked for suddenly feels pointless. I can look the part but I cannot change who I am inside, and my father would still be disappointed in me.

Why should I care what he thinks anyway?

I decide I will ask Alexandria about it, because I need to know how she feels on the matter. Maybe it will be for the best if I change those things either way, if I drink my coffee black and listen to rock. The kind of man I was raised to be.

But then she says, "I caught him wearing eyeliner once," and suddenly I cannot breathe, especially when they start giggling and calling me such terrible names, names my brother spent all of highschool listening to.

I must turn green because my brothers ask if I need a trash can. I wave them off, try to makeup and excuse that I overworked myself, that I need some fresh air, but their words still spill into my thoughts through the headphones until I make it outside and it cuts as someone calls me a word my sister had broken someone nose over after calling our brother it and they tell Alexandria she doves a bullet.

I puke in the bin just outside the gym drawers.

She lied to me. She lied to me. She looked me right in the eyes and told me she liked the eyeliner on me.

And she told them.

For the briefest of seconds I am furious at my siblings for even asking me to put it on, when they know how much I hate it. How embarrassing I find it. But then I remember they are my family, my only family, and I cannot hate them for anything. They did not ask me with malicious intent, they did not mean me any harm. And I know after seeing my reaction to it, they will never ask me to again.

But Alexandria, she sat there and let them say those things about me. She told me she liked it. I let her calm me down, I let her help me. She should laugh. It is pathetic.

When my brothers come out to check on me, I tell them I am sick, food poisoning, and excuse myself. They insist on doing this another time and if I weren't so distraught I probably would have genuinely wanted to do so. Instead I mumble some agreeance and leave. I cannot get to my car fast enough. And I cannot even leave and go home because I am supposed to meet Alexandria in less than twenty minutes. For the first time since I saw her, I feel nauseous at the thought of meeting her, looking her in the eyes and pretending I'm fine, we're fine.