Read Lies You Wanted to Hear for Free Online Page B

carpet?”
    “I’ll call you later and tell you all about it.”
    “Promise?”
    “Promise.”
    I hung up the phone. Shit shit shit. Why was I so nasty to Jill? Matt was precisely what I needed in my life. I woke up this morning thinking about our date, how he jabbered away at dinner and didn’t ask me a million questions, how he seemed, in the best sense of the word, like a regular guy: forthright, congenial, eager to please, but certainly no pushover. I liked the way he held his ground when I tried to seduce him into coming up to my apartment. He said I had him dangling by a thread, but I didn’t believe that in the light of day any more than I did last night. He wanted to show me that he was in control, that he was going to take me to bed on his terms, not mine. That seemed to bode well for good times to come, but the possibility of good times with Matt made me feel like I was losing Griffin, losing not only what I wanted but what I knew: that ache, the habitual sting, like tearing the skin around my thumbnail till it bled.
    All Jill wanted was for me to be happy. The key, according to my therapist, was for me to want it myself. My mother told me happiness was overrated. Any fool can be happy , she liked to say. The hard part is feeling like you matter .
    ***
    Three years ago, the morning after that first impromptu date with Griffin, I was the one calling Jill, trying to make the whole episode sound amusing, though I left out the part about the Lord & Taylor bag of marijuana.
    Jill said, “The guy is obviously a jerk, Luce. Be thankful you found out before you started going out with him.”
    But I was already second-guessing myself, wondering what I’d said or done to drive him away, what I could have said or done to make him stay. I’d had my fair share of boyfriends up to that point, but no one who left me yearning. I didn’t envy Jill for having Terry, but I envied her certainty that he was her one and only. It seemed so arbitrary, a trick she played on herself. Why him when the possibilities were limitless?
    As the week dragged on, I began to think I might never see Griffin again. Then, late Friday afternoon, I was standing by the copy machine at work when a man’s voice behind me said, “Buy you a drink?”
    I turned around and glanced at the clock on the wall. “If I don’t get a better offer in the next eleven minutes.”
    Griffin grinned. He was wearing a starched white shirt with the top two buttons unbuttoned, jeans with a pressed-in crease, and an alligator-skin belt. I could feel my coworkers watching me. I wanted to kiss him; I wanted to kick him in the shins. He was smaller than I remembered, about my height and whippet-thin.
    “I’ll wait for you outside,” he said.
    I gave him a skeptical look.
    “Honest.” He put his hand on his heart. “Till Hell freezes over.”
    My own heart was pounding as I stood in the bathroom and brushed my hair. I smiled at myself in the mirror, feeling like I was fourteen again.
    Spring had finally arrived; people were out in shirtsleeves and tank tops, pastel leaves unfolding on the trees. We tried one bar, then another, but they were so crowded we couldn’t get in the door. Griffin and I walked across the Square to Harvard Yard and sat on the steps of Widener Library. He asked me how I’d been, and I said fine, keeping busy.
    “What about you?” I smiled. “Got any more dope deals lined up?”
    He grinned. “Nah, that was just a favor I was doing for friend. I like to consider it as an act of civil disobedience, my way of undermining the establishment.”
    I bumped his tassel loafer (no socks) with my foot. “Come on, you look just like the establishment.”
    “It’s all a big disguise. Makes it easier to operate behind enemy lines.”
    “Seriously, what do you do?”
    “I have my own one-man PR firm—Griffin Chandler Strategies. Companies hire me to help them get publicity and improve their image, come up with clever ways for them to market their