Conversations With Liars: The First Liar
The clock was deafening; its obnoxious ticking rang like a bell through the stony silence. Honey stained ash gleamed in the sunlight that poured through the plate windows, the table reflecting the light, and the slight squeak of a swivel chair being twisted by its seat marred the quiet. White walls gleamed professionally, everything as buffed and polished as it could possibly be. The fresh smell of lilies wafted unobtrusively through the room, as though somebody had thought the smell of lilies could mask the odour of bullshit that lingered in the space.
Did making a room look nice hide the ugliness that occurred within?
Two people sat across from each other in the conference room, neither able to look at the other. Arms folded stubbornly across his chest, a young male slouched in his seat. He was the one making the chair squeak, unable to keep himself still. Though he itched to loosen his tie and remove his jacket, he did not. His blue eyes bored a hole through the plate glass window at a point half way into the horizon, some kind of satellite or antenna that sat on the top of an apartment block. Opposite him sat a tired young woman who had unsuccessfully tried to hide the bags under her eyes with concealer. The floating floral dress she wore was unflattering and emphasised her size, but she didn't have many nice clothes at the moment.
Tick-tock, tick-tock: every movement of the second hand was like a gun shot. With every repetition her teeth gritted a little harder and she became more on edge.
"You know at some point they're going to walk back in here and expected us to have, I don't know, said two words to each other," the young man finally sighed into the silence.
"Well I'm sorry but I don't know what else I can say," she sniped.
"Look, Gabby…"
"That'll be Gabrielle to you until you start acting like my friend again. You know, my friend, Justin? I miss him; he'd be much more helpful than you in this situation."
"Come on, Gabby, can't you at least try to understand?"
"Understand what, Justin?" Her brown eyes flashed angrily as she finally dared to look at him, but anyone who knew her could see the hurt written in the way she twitched her lip and drummed her fingers too softly on the table top. "That I came to you with a problem and you've dragged me into your lawyer's office like a criminal? That for all your treating me like a criminal you're refusing to do the one thing that would actually prove to you once and for all whether I'm telling the truth or not? That you're doing it all on the say so of a woman you don't even like that much? Make me understand that, Justin, because I'm having trouble."
"That was such a cheap shot."
"Well forgive me but I'm a little hormonal right now. Can't think why."
"Look…" Justin subconsciously began to mirror her actions, fingers drumming listlessly on the table as he swung back and forth in his chair. Metal glinted from his hand in the sunlight. "You can understand why she's a little freaked. And why I am, too."
"Considering that I'm dealing with this too and neither of you are acting as the nine month water bed for what feels like some kind of alien kicking around in my stomach, you'll forgive me if I'm not so sympathetic. I still don't get why that adds up to you refusing a paternity test. Surely you both WANT to know if this kid's yours or not?
"It's complicated, Gabby." He tipped his head forward onto the table, hiding his face in his hands for a moment and trying to breathe deeply.
She looked at him sadly, her tone suddenly too quiet. "It was always complicated. You never used to treat me like shit though."
"I'm sorry! I just… God."
Much to Gabrielle's surprise, she actually found herself feeling sorry for him when he started to cry. She had no idea whether it was because it was Justin or just because it was any man at all, but she found something more heart tugging about it when men cried. Still, she tried to steel herself not to feel too much pity. He wasn't exactly earning her good feelings at present, as evidenced by the expensive law firm she'd had to stroll into this morning.
"I swear, I would have been happy to just take the damn test and then worry about the legal stuff, but she… you get why I can't exactly stand up to her right now, right?"
"Look, Justin…"
Gabrielle steeled herself, trying to find the strength to be stern. At eight months pregnant it was difficult, she lacked the energy. She also lacked her usual self assurance - she felt fat and ugly. She had never been too smart, never been too wealthy, and had struggled through one menial office job after another, but what she had always known and prized about herself was her pretty darn good figure. Being without it left her feeling vulnerable. As much as she hated and cursed herself for being shallow about that, without her body she was without her confidence. None of her nice clothes fitted, she was too poor to buy any nice maternity ones, and she was left with shapeless sacks. As silly as it was to base her self esteem on her appearance, it was what it was.
"I understand that you can't exactly stand up for me when she calls me names, I had an affair with her husband. I understand that she's not thrilled that I'm pregnant and that she doesn't want you anywhere near me. But I don't understand where that all adds up to not taking this test and where it all adds up to you getting your lawyer to breathe down my neck like I did something wrong suggesting you take one."
"She just… come on, she went through enough just finding out about us, and now you're pregnant? If she wants to fixate on the legal stuff being in place and shit being agreed before the test, I kind of have to let her. I owe her."
"But… isn't this expensive?" Gabrielle threw up her hands. "And if as you say she's so convinced I'm just trying to con you, why does she want to waste all this money hashing out agreements over a kid she thinks is going to turn out not to be yours?"
Justin could not answer this accusation and he knew it, so all he could do was shrug and mumble. "I never said it was logical. I just said she…"
"Has you by the balls?"
"Gabby…" He shot her a warning glance.
She put up her hands in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. Just still don't understand why you haven't left her. It was all you talked about while we were… umm… you know. And now she's purposely making this whole situation an even bigger problem than it already is. I just don't get it. She's hurting herself as much as me here."
Mrs Timberlake had been hurting both of them for a very long time, but neither of them would say it out loud. It had been discussed at many a point during their affair - how unaffectionate she was, how dismissive, how snobbish she could be. The way she could undermine someone with the merest indifferent glance was Gabby's favourite. Gabrielle had suffered through this as her secretary, Justin as her husband. It wasn't intentional and she wasn't a malicious woman, but their marriage had been a whirlwind whim based more on alcohol and partying than any real compatibility. They had known each other but three months, and as it turned out not very well at all. Had they even attempted to live with each other beforehand the mistake probably would have been realised and ended in a swift break up, but marriage was a little more complicated. Justin had never meant to find solace in Gabrielle's arms and he would never excuse himself for it, but anybody could have seen it coming. It was the biggest cliché in the book, and now he was paying for it.
"I'm sorry," was all he could say.
"I just… I know that officially you're not allowed to have anything to do with me ever again, but you said that we were still friends, Justin. As a friend, can't you please just help me out and take this stress off my very pregnant head? Just agree to the damn test and we have at least the next eighteen years to worry about the rest."
"It's not just Emily," Justin finally brought himself to admit. "I… we can't do this test until after this kid's born and that gives me way too much time to get used to the idea. What if it's not mine and you've made some mistake? I then get to have attached myself to a kid that's not mine, which fucking sucks. The other day I almost found one of her rants about just refusing to acknowledge the kid kind of appealing, I was that freaked out about it."
"I haven't made a mistake, Justin. I know Emily wants to believe that I'm just a money grubbing bitch but I was only sleeping with one person, even if I shouldn't have been. Unless this child is Jesus back to save the world, it's yours."
"I believe that you're not a liar, but you have to understand why she doesn't."
"I'm not a liar."
Oh yes I am.
It's just that I'm not lying about what Emily thinks I'm lying about. This baby does not really belong to some guy I fucked when my dastardly plan to steal her husband and therefore his riches got rumbled. I did not purposely set out to steal her husband so that I could get a ring on my finger instead of hers. I'm really not that much of a bitch. As nice a change being Mrs JT would be from being poor and constantly at the mercy of my nearest recruitment agency, it was never about money.
At first, it was just about sex. He's attractive and he was needy and like any woman I wanted to mother him because he looks really cute when he's down-hearted. That's stupid, I know, but can I help it if it's true? At first we just bonded over little complaints about her. Then we started chatting some more, and then a spark flew somewhere and eventually it was consummated. At first, it was just good sex - I hadn't had a relationship in a while and didn't want one, and he wanted a release and for somebody to make him feel sexy and masculine and wanted again. It was totally wrong, but we were too caught up in the thrill to care.
Over time, it became different - at least for me, anyway. The more time I spent with him, and the more he opened up to me about his life, and the more we just chatted about life and everything the more I found I liked him. Eventually, I did the really stupid thing and fell in love with him over the course of our ten month affair. Maybe it was just because he wasn't really mine to have, I don't know. All I know is that I fell. He told me he had too, but to this day I'm not sure whether he loved me or just the idea of me. As much as he talked about leaving Emily, he never actually did it, and I'm not naïve enough to think that it was always just bad timing. It may be that he was just waiting for something to push him over the edge and give him the guts to do it, or it may be that he was never going to leave her at all.
I guess I'll never know. What I do know is that when she found out, shit happened. I still don't know exactly what happened between them or why he made the decision he did, but he told me he had to try and work it out. He told me he didn't want to, but he had to. I want to believe him, but again I'm not so naïve. We had a talk and he explained to me that though he wanted to keep me as a friend, she would be checking every phone bill and every credit card receipt relentlessly for a while and that we'd need time and distance before she might calm down enough to get over it. I totally panicked - losing the relationship was bad enough but losing him altogether I couldn't handle.
That's when I got really stupid.
That's when I seduced him one last time and purposely got pregnant in some pathetically Jerry Springer attempt to hold onto him.
Weirdly enough, for all that effort I made, after I saw that blue line appear I didn't tell him. I didn't stake my claim, didn't do a damn thing. Even now, after I finally told him, I haven't made so much as the tiniest suggestion that he should leave her for me. Maybe it's just shame, maybe common sense having kicked back in a few weeks too late, but I'm not going to put up that fight. I love him, but he was never mine then and he's not mine now. Using a baby to take what's not mine isn't going to end in bunnies and rainbows and happy ever after. I only even started trying to contact him when it got to four months, when it occurred to me that my baby still deserved a father and he deserved to know his child.
I try not to think that my attempts to contact him were diverted by Emily, but it's hard not to. Justin Timberlake is a very famous man with a lot of management companies and agents you can go through, so if it takes three and a half months to get a message passed through you know something's up. I only managed to get through to him because some teenybopper message board I was trolling through for another management address posted his cell number and I managed to leave a voicemail before they forced him to change it for the millionth time. Still, I don't think I have much right to complain about that even if Emily did do it. I fucked her husband, she has a right to be pissed.
So there you have it. That's my dirty little lie. Justin thinks I'm being honest with him and that this was all an accident; he's wrong. Emily may not be totally right, but I guess she's scored better than he has. She's at least got me pegged as a liar even if it's the wrong lie.