I Was Born for This(63)

He pauses. ‘Well, okay. So, I like her.’

‘Now, is that a like, or a like like?’

‘Oh my God, you sound like my mum. I had a crush on her, okay?’

‘Okay, okay. Just clarifying.’

‘We were talking on Tumblr messenger quite a lot. And obviously I could see from her Tumblr that she was mainly interested in The Ark. So I just … sort of … suggested that I liked them too, which, you know, wasn’t a full lie, I liked a couple of their songs I’d heard on the radio! But … the lie just, like, went on from there. Got bigger and bigger until I was paying literally a hundred quid to go to their concert and come down to London just so I could see her.’

‘And how did that work out for you?’ I ask.

‘Well, I really could have bloody used that hundred quid for something else.’ He laughs.

Someone who deserved to go to their concert could have got that ticket.

‘I think we were getting along really well in real life,’ he continues, ‘er … until we went out after the meet-up on Tuesday.’

‘Did something happen?’

‘No. Nothing specific.’ He rubs his forehead, then looks at me. ‘It just became very apparent that she’d rather be hanging out with you.’

I blink. ‘D-did it?’

‘I mean firstly, she talks about you literally all the time.’ He folds his arms. ‘We’d start talking about something, and she’d always find a way to bring you into it. You were like … this constant presence in all of our conversations.’

I say nothing.

‘Secondly,’ he continues, ‘she started to sense that I didn’t like The Ark as much as she did. And it’s not like she wanted to talk about The Ark all the time, like you, but when we did talk about them … she could tell that I wasn’t that interested.’

‘Good,’ I say. Good. I’m glad Juliet could tell. She’s not stupid.

He looks at me. ‘Honestly, I thought it was just … a band she liked.’

Just a band she liked.

Imagine if The Ark was just a band we liked.

‘Sometimes you need to lie.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘Do you ever feel like nobody knows the real you?’

When I don’t respond he huffs out a laugh and looks away.

‘That’s what I feel like,’ he says. ‘Back at home, in the real world. I … I’m not myself. I just say and do things to make people like me. Not even my closest friends know anything important about me.’ He shakes his head. ‘And I don’t know why I can’t just be myself around anyone … whoever that is.’

I stare at him.

‘And then I started talking to Juliet online.’ His eyes glaze over. ‘And she liked talking to me. She was excited about talking to me. And I could be myself. I could talk to her about all sorts of things and we had stuff in common. And I just thought … if I could just reach out to her and get to know her in the real world … maybe I could have someone in my life who knows and likes the real me.’

He breathes out harshly and looks away.

‘But I made a mistake,’ he says. ‘I get it. The lie. Just one little lie slipped in, just one thing I had to lie about to get her to really like me. Just like I’ve always done to everyone I meet. Lie to make people like me. But I get it. You can’t make friends or … or relationships based on lies. And in the end the whole thing was a lie anyway. Our relationship. The idea that I had in my head. It was all something I’d just … fabricated. To make me feel a bit better about myself. So I had something to just … believe in.’

I open my mouth to say something snarky, but close it again.

‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘I’m not gonna start, like, begging for forgiveness, or whatever.’

I lean forward and put my head in my hands.

Fuck.

Why is nothing ever simple?

After a few moments, he says, ‘Er, you okay?’

I sit up again. ‘I get it.’

‘What?’

‘I get why you lied.’ I smile weakly. ‘I do stuff like that too. Back at home, with my school friends. I just say things to be liked and … stay silent about stuff I care about. Because I feel like no one cares about the “real me”. But with Juliet I felt a bit more like myself.’

‘Oh.’

‘We’re both a bit shit, aren’t we?’

Mac chuckles. ‘Juliet’s probably the purest out of all of us, anyway.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I came here to tell you to go back to her,’ he says.

‘I can’t. I’ve already fucked up our friendship.’

‘No.’ He slaps his hand down loudly on his knee. ‘No. Juliet needs a friend like you.’

‘What, one who won’t shut up about a boy band?’

‘No, one she can actually get along with and have fun with.’ He shakes his head. ‘Like, considering her home life now, she really, really needs you. Like, now more than ever.’

Wait. What’s he talking about?

Home life? Now more than ever?

‘What?’ I ask. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘You know,’ he says. ‘Her parents?’