Page 11 of The Five Year Lie

Larri reaches for the tweezers to shape her piece, which is turning into a slender, footed goblet. “What if they’ve been using some other app? Maybe this was just a slipup.”

“Well...” My head swims with confusion. I’m the last person who should be giving out advice today. “Does Taraseemokay to you? Is she doing all right?”

“I thought so,” Larri says. “But that’s the thing about living with an addict. You second-guess every little thing. You’re always waiting for the next disaster. Addicts lie. You’re supposed to say—theaddictionlies. But sometimes it doesn’t matter who’s betrayed you, right? I don’t even know how to talk to her about this. I was, like, thirty seconds from packing up my stuff and leaving forever. I have loved her since the ninth grade. But I don’t think I can go through this again.”

“So you came here to melt some glass instead?”

“Yeah. Hit me.” She nods at the furnace.

I step on the pedal and feel the devil’s breath on my bare arms.

“When are you going to go gay for me, Ariel? All our problems will be solved.”

I roll my eyes.

“No, hear me out—you’ve been pining for years over some guyyou never even introduced me to. What a waste, right? We could be having a torrid affair.”

It’s the perfect opening to tell her about my own outrageous morning. And about Drew. She doesn’t even know his name.

But I don’t say a word. Trusting people has always been hard for me. And after Drew left, it got twice as hard. So I pass her another few ounces of glass and wipe my forehead with my arm. “We already get sweaty together, Larissa. The magic is gone for me.”

She laughs. We keep on working. And neither of us touches our phones.

My mother picked up Buzz from school at noon, as she usually does, so I catch up with them a few hours later at the playground. Mom is eager to run off for a massage appointment, which spares me from having to discuss my day.

Buzz isn’t ready to leave, so I indulge him by pushing his swing until my arms are like jelly. And for the rest of the evening, I’m basically an absentee parent. I feed him frozen pizza, and I cut bathtime short because I can’t make cheerful conversation like a normal human.

My mind is like the washing machine on spin cycle, tumbling around and around with the same questions.Who sent me the text? What is happening?

Why did Drew leave me? Why do I have to think about this again?

And then there’s the text itself.There’s trouble. I need to see you. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.It’s so ominous.

Drew never said anything like that to me. Not once.

After a terrible night’s sleep, I text my mother the next morning, asking her to take Buzz to school so I can go to work early.

Ariel: I have to make up for yesterday. I forgot about a dentist appt.

Lying makes me feel like a heel. But after five years of secrecy, I’m good at it now.

She appears five minutes later, because she’s an early riser and I live in her backyard. Well, hers and soon maybe Ray’s too. About three years after my father’s death, she and Ray became a couple.

I’d bet a lot of money that people in the office gossip about it. But I really don’t care, as long as she’s happy.

“How was the dentist?” she asks as I toss my keys and my phone into my bag.

“Uneventful. No cavities.”

“Grandma!” Buzz interrupts my lies by tearing down the stairs toward us.

“Careful on the stairs,” my mother and I say in unison.

Since the moment I announced that I was pregnant with a stranger’s child—and that I’d be raising the baby—my mother has been supportive. And even if I sometimes feel like a bird who failed to fledge from the nest, it’s pretty handy to live ten paces from Grandma, with free babysitting, too.

I kiss my boy goodbye and head to work on my bike. I want a few minutes alone with the employee directory before the office fills with programmers and salespeople.

But when I arrive in the office, I’m not the only occupant. Zain is hunched over his keyboard at the desk beside mine.