What If I Lived a Lie? [You Me at Six]

Chapter Twelve: Strike a Match, Burn Me Down, Make Ashes Out of Me.

“Hunter, what the hell are you doing?” Dan questioned for the millionth time that day; two days after the dreaded incident had occurred. He knew he’d fucked up by having a drunken girl answer his phone while he was out, but, in his defense, he hadn’t thought it would be Hunter—nor had he thought his dear, dear drunken friend Shelby would make such an ass of them both; or that Hunter would still be mad at him two days later. He’d explained himself, quite thoroughly, but nothing had gotten through to her; she was stubborn, he’d give her that much, but he could be just as tenacious himself.

“Ignoring you, was that much not obvious?” she retorted, busying herself with attending to the needs of the customer before her, while her boyfriend stood, defiantly and annoyingly, in the way.

“Goddammit, Dan, if you’re gonna stand there, in the way, at least put on an apron and give me some help!” Olivia hollered, narrowly avoiding being burnt by spilling hot fudge.

“Sorry, ‘Liv,” the dye blond drummer muttered, looping an apron around his neck and tying it behind his back, “What d’you – whoa, what the hell happened to your arm?”

Olivia’s eyes snapped, immediately, to the spot she knew the drummer was talking about; she’d already rehearsed the lie over and over again in her head, on the off chance someone would ask about it, “I accidentally left the mixer unlocked while I was trying to clean it and its bowl fell on my hand.”

“Ouch, m’sorry.”

And that was that.

At the end of the newfound midday rush, Dan was still around and Hunter was still not speaking to him. When Dan asked his girlfriend’s best friend for advice, she’d said something along the lines of ‘she could keep this up all day,’ ‘you fucked up,’ and ‘you should stick around, we could use the help.’ So, despite the rather discouraging advice from his pseudo-friend, he did stick around and help out when yet another rush came through. In fact, by the time close rolled around, the drummer was perched on the counter, waiting for the two girls to complete their summary of the day.

“Over the course of a week, profits have increased about sixty-percent,” Olivia stated, glasses pushed up to her nose, bangs tucked back away from her face and her serious expression melting away as she sat up. No longer hunched over the computer and calculator before her, Dan could swear he saw a slight bruise on her collarbone—and it didn’t look like the kind that were fun to obtain. But, he remained silent.

“Man, I wonder what did it…”

“Well, Oli posted on his twitter about—”

“I didn’t know you still spoke to Oli! Sorry to cut you off, but, I think that’s great, you should invite him over sometime! And what about Josh, how come Josh’s never around anymore?” Dan observed the two carefully; Olivia looked nearly panicked and Hunter’s smile was forced—had they not been communicating? Talking? That seemed so odd for the two inseparable best friends. He wondered if Hunter knew about the secret arrangement, as he had—had Olivia already spilled the beans?—or were himself, Josh, and Olivia the only ones who knew the truth. Did Olivia know that Dan knew? Now, his head hurt.

“Uh, Josh’s been busy.”

It was halfway true. But, when they weren’t recording, all Josh did was lay around, on his phone, tweeting and watching bad American reality TV shows.

“Oh, right, makes sense.”

Dan could hear in Hunter’s voice that she hadn’t really believed that, and saw the hurt flash briefly in her eyes before they got back to business.

“I came up with an idea… Maybe now that we’re making more money, we could afford to get a design made up to be put on our cake boxes so they’re not so plain… Maybe get some specialized take-out bags, too? And then, after that, we could get more tables in here, add a few coffees and hot chocolates to the menu?”