The Lie(19)

It’s electric in a way that can’t be ignored.

She holds the cigar like she’s been holding one her whole life. Her posture is relaxed, confident, and doesn’t at all look like how I feel inside. Frazzled, heart caught in the washing cycle.

But why should she? I know the way she looks at me sometimes, flirtatious and coy with eyes full of secrets, but in the next she’s belly-laughing over some crude joke she heard. I’m just a professor, even if I happen to have blue eyes. A man giving her a job.

And I’m married.

I have a son.

I have so much.

So why do I want her to look at me differently?

She passes the cigar back and blows the smoke out the side of her mouth, like a forties film star.

“Very Lauren Bacall,” I tell her as we start walking slowly down the pedestrian path, a few people heading the opposite way into town to the bars and nightlife. But we, we’re heading to the darkness.

“Bogie and Bacall, they had it all,” she says dreamily. “You know, you never talk about your wife.”

I cough, the smoke getting momentarily stuck in my throat. “I don’t?” I manage to say.

“No,” she says. “You don’t talk about yourself very often, you know. You’ll go on and on about film but nothing about yourself. You’re very mysterious, Brigs McGregor.”

I roll my eyes. “Frankly I’m the opposite. I guess I don’t talk about my life because, well, it’s boring.”

“What did I tell you earlier?” she says, smacking me on the arm. “You are the opposite of boring. So tell me then. Tell me about your wife. Your parents. Your brother.” She pauses. “You talk about your son a lot though, so at least I know that about you. You’re a good father.”

I give her the same smile she gave me when I told her she was perfect. It’s nice of her to say, but I don’t believe it.

I inhale deeply and think.

“All right,” I say carefully. “I married Miranda when I was twenty-one.”

“Wow, that’s young. Shotgun wedding like my mom’s?”

I shake my head as memories creep on past, most of them unhappy. “No, we only had Hamish three years ago. We met when I was in college. Edinburg University, right here.” I gesture back to the school. “Even though we didn’t have any classes together, I knew of her. Everyone knew of her. She was the kind of girl that would never give any guy the time of day. She was a socialite, really. Bred differently. Her parents, the Hardings, they’re kind of a big deal around the city. And at the time, my uncle and aunt were here, and they’re also part of that scene. We met at one of their parties and somehow I managed to charm her. Still not sure how, really.”

“Oh, I can see why,” Natasha says, grinning at me. “You have no idea how charming you really are. Which makes you even more charming.”

Suddenly, it seems far too hot to be wearing a jacket.

I clear my throat. “Well, I suppose she thought the same. The rest is history.”

She stops and studies me. “That’s it?”

I stop and stare, passing her the cigar.

This time my finger lingers on hers for maybe a second too long.

God, I wish I had the rest of that Scotch at my disposal. These feelings need to drown.

“What do you mean ‘that’s it’?”

“You’re not going to go on about how wonderful she is, how she’s the love of your life? You talk about Hamish that way all the time.”

I shouldn’t be so floored by how blunt she is, but I am. Or maybe it’s not that she’s blunt. It’s because I don’t have the nerve to tell her the whole truth.

Because Miranda isn’t the love of my life.

She’s just the mother of my child.

And a roommate I’ve been living with for eleven long years.

“No,” I say simply. Even the partial truth is freeing. “I’m not.”

She cocks her head, taking a drag. Studying me still, like she’s trying to read words written on my face. I wonder what they say. Finally, she just nods and says, “Sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”

Yes, you do, I think. And that’s what I…

Bloody hell. I can’t even finish my own thoughts without scaring myself.

“It’s not a problem,” I tell her and start walking again. “As for my parents, they’re lovely. Really. My brother and I have more of a strained relationship though. He’s adopted, came into my life just after I left high school and put our family through hell. He was a right bastard actually, and I hated him for a long time.”

“Why?”

“Well, it seems trite now, but I saw how my parents were with him, giving him the life he never had, and he didn’t react well to it. He was a teenager, which didn’t help, and eventually he was stealing from them, even me, doing everything he could to get money for crack, meth, whatever it was. Eventually my parents had to kick him out and he was living on the streets. I can’t tell you how hard it was to be walking through this city sometimes and see him panhandling. Skinny. On what always seemed to be his last legs. He may have been adopted, but he was still my brother.”

“That sounds horrible,” she says, shaking her head.

“It was horrible,” I say with a sigh, remembering the sorrow and pain Lachlan had caused me like it was yesterday. “But eventually he cleaned himself up, and now he’s a lot better. Still drinks too much, and sometimes I wonder if he’s abusing some other kinds of drugs. Doesn’t talk much.”