Faking Christmas(13)

My stomach began to tighten. I did not want to be set up, and I really didn’t need an unwanted ex-boyfriend hanging around with my family all week. I would soon be seeing my mother cuddled up with somebody who wasn’t my dad. I’d have to act normal around Russ all the while keeping my chin up and my smile in place so as not to ruin Christmas for everyone. I couldn’t handle the thought of some awkward setup. Not when I was just trying to survive the week with a smile still attached. Trying to keep my emotions civil would be a full-time job.

So, on a whim, I pulled out something I thought might save me…a harmless white lie.

“As good as a sexy lumberjack sounds, I’ve actually been seeing somebody the past few weeks, so I think Glenn and his mom might be disappointed.”

A long pause and then, “Wait, WHAT?” An explosion of excited words burst across the telephone from where she stood in New Hampshire and where I stood in Stanton. I pulled the phone away to save my eardrums. “When was this?! Why didn’t you tell me? What does he look like? OH MY GOSH, Olive, this is HUGE!”

“It’s all pretty new.” Extremely new. So new it’s almost not even worth mentioning ever again. “It’s not a big deal. I promise.”

“Tell me everything,” Chloe demanded. “Unless you’re lying. Wait. Are you lying? This sounds too convenient.”

I hesitated. If I was going to sell this, Chloe couldn’t know the truth. She and my mom were too close. Chloe would accidentally spill the beans, and I’d be tricked under the mistletoe with Glenn before I could stop it. No. I’d tell Chloe the truth after Christmas, when my imaginary lover got kicked to the proverbial curb. And she would understand. Actually, now that I thought about it, she had to understand. She owed me one. She lied to me for three weeks about dating Dirk McCoy in high school. So…yeah. That didn’t make me sound petty at all.

“I’m not lying,” I lied.

“Okay, hold on. I’m putting on a show for the kids so I can listen uninterrupted in my bedroom. First love, yay!”

My eyes widened. “No, Chlo, I’m not in love. I just…we’ve gone out. Like on dates and stuff.” I stood and began pacing the floor, stopping at my chest of drawers near the window.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

My mind quickly did the math. Casual dates did not a boyfriend make. What was the saying again? Date as many guys as you wanted, but kiss only one? (Or in my case, none. A very big, fat none.) If I was going to play the fake-other-man card, I would need to put a title on it.

“Yup. He’s my boyfriend.”

“Who is he? How did you meet him?” This time, her voice had lowered a few octaves. Much less squealing and maybe a smidge suspicious? Like she was sniffing around and smelling something that didn’t quite add up. I needed to add a few irons to the fire.

“It’s all happened fast. The boyfriend title is…new. But I really like him.”

“Who is he? What’s his name?”

My hands stilled in my underwear drawer. Shoot. Who was he?

I racked my brain to come up with a name. Some name. A name. There were none. NO names. I could think of no guy names. My brain was an empty sheet of paper. Men didn’t exist in this world. My life was at my school, and at school there was only…

No.

But suddenly my brain latched onto the name Miles and wouldn’t let go.

NO.

Miles. Miles. Miles. Miles.

Mr. Grady! My brain detected another male human. He was in his seventies, but it was fine. I just needed a name, and his name was Ralph!

Ralph. I opened my mouth to say the name, but the word refused to release its death grip on my tongue. Even though men no longer existed in my brain, I knew for certain that Ralph was not a name from my generation.

“OLIVE. Spill.”

“It’s Miles!”

My heart rate slowed as the pressure of providing a name melted off my shoulders. Though I did feel lighter, my body was immediately filled with remorse. I hated lying to my sister, especially since this type of news had the potential to put her over the moon in the happiness department. It also felt a tiny bit disloyal to use Miles in this way. Not because I liked him, but because I didn’t. I was disappointed in myself that I had sunk so low as to use him like that. Oh well, he would never know. And Chloe didn’t know him, so hopefully it—

“Wait? From your school? The hot new teacher you can’t stand?!”

My grip on the phone tightened. Had I told her about him?

“How did you know?”

“You complain about him all the time.”

I so do not. Do I? Okay, maybe a few horrible things said in passing, but nothing anybody should have remembered.

“How’d you know he was hot?” I knew for certain that I would have never told her that.

“I don’t know, I guess I just assumed. With how you talked about him, I think I just filled in the blank in my mind. So are you for real? This is CRAZY! How did you two start going out? I thought you were never going to date somebody you work with ever again. And WHY didn’t you tell me?!”

Her intrusive questions swirled in the air as my brain attempted to pick one to answer. This was why people warned you about lying—even little white lies told for the simple reason of saving your sanity. Already, my sanity was null and void, and now my anxiety was through the roof. Maybe I could backtrack.