Lies
I woke up the next morning feeling terrible, both mentally and physically. My entire body ached like I’d been the one out drinking the night before, not Seamus. Speaking of Seamus, he was nowhere to be found. It took me a few seconds to wake up enough to realize that the shower was running. I barely even remembered him coming in the night before and slipping into bed with me, but there was a telltale trail of clothing leading toward our bed, and I couldn’t imagine anyone other than him would be using our shower.
Except perhaps Zac. But I did remember him leaving without so much as a single word.
I knew he was the reason that I felt like shit. I had washed the evidence of him from my body, but I couldn’t wash him from my soul. I couldn’t get away from him completely, and it was only a matter of time before Seamus saw the traces of him that couldn’t be scrubbed away. In the meantime, I was going to do everything in my power to hide it, but I just didn’t think it would be enough.
Feeling like I was being crushed under the weight of it all, I couldn’t even bring myself to get out of bed. A quick glance at the clock beside the hotel bed told me that it was getting close to noon. It was our day off, though, so I wasn’t really concerned. I was surprised that Shay had slept in so late, but I supposed he had been quite drunk when he got back. Not too drunk to slip silently into bed without waking me, though. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was up to something, but I knew that I was the liar and cheat in the relationship, not him.
By the time Seamus finished his shower and walked back into the room, a towel slung low on his waist, I still hadn’t moved an inch from my position on the bed. I barely even had the energy or will to lift my head enough to shamelessly stare at him as he dropped the towel and shimmied into a pair of jeans that were probably mine. I didn’t call him out on it, though. I didn’t do a damn thing but stare and feel like a horrible human being for oh so many reasons.
“I feel like shit,” he said, rummaging through his suitcase for a t-shirt to go with the jeans that I was positive were mine.
“I can relate,” I mumbled.
Shay spun around and raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh, can you? I thought I was the one who got shitfaced last night.”
Damn. I hadn’t even realized I’d replied loud enough for him to hear me. I needed an explanation for why I felt like shit, but I could think of none. I offered him a shrug and said, “You are. I’m just tired, I guess.”
“You slept like the dead, though. Didn’t even wake up when I came in.”
There was that little mystery solved, I supposed. Not that there was much of a mystery to it; Shay was pretty much an open book. I didn’t really think he was hiding anything from me.
“I guess I did,” I replied with another shrug. “I don’t really remember.”
“Obviously,” he replied, a tiny note of amusement in his voice.
I could tell that he was close to interrogating me. He knew something was up, but he couldn’t figure out what. I knew that phase well. The phase were there’s just that nagging feeling that you’re missing something, so you ask lots of questions and second guess everything to try to get some hint of what it is. Of course, I’d never been on that side of things before. I was always the guilty one. And it seemed that everything I knew about how to lie my way out of anything had vanished from my mind. Shay might have still been a few steps behind me, but he was catching up fast, and I kept tripping over my own feet.
He finally settled on a faded Nick Cave shirt, and as he slipped it over his head, he asked, “So, what wore you out last night anyway? Figured you’d be bored here all alone… should have come out with us.”
“Wasn’t really feeling up to it,” I replied, repeating my assertions from the night before. I didn’t really know why I hadn’t wanted to drink. It was strange for me, I knew. I had no good explanation for it… or for why I was in such a foul mood. “Nothing wore me out, really. Just the tour in general.”
It was a complete and total lie, but what other choice did I have? I couldn’t very well tell him that sleeping with my brother had been what sapped all my energy.
“I see,” he said, walking over to the bed and climbing in next to me. “Well, we’ve got plenty of free time until we leave for Milwaukee tonight. So we can rest up a bit.”
“Yeah, I guess that will help…” I trailed off as Shay curled up beside me and laid his head on my shoulder.
These little moments with him, when our bodies seemed to fit together so perfectly, made me wonder what I needed Zac for. But I knew that as soon as I was with Zac again, and it would happen again, I would struggle to remember what I saw in anyone else but him. It was just this endless tug of war, trying to find some reason and will to give one of them up.
I was so caught up in my thoughts that I barely noticed the strange look on Shay’s face or the way that he was sniffing at my hair.
“Tay?”
“Hmm?”
“You smell like smoke.”
Well, shit.
“Did someone sneak out for a smoke last night?”
“Umm,” I replied. “I did, yeah. You know I smoke, Shay.”
“Sometimes. I didn’t know you did it that often. You know you stink, right?”
So much for that shower washing away Zac. It couldn’t even wash away my lesser sins, it seemed. I still couldn’t quite believe this was really turning into an argument. I knew that he didn’t like the cigarettes; he’d turned his nose up at them enough times for me to figure that out. I supposed it didn’t help that I was obviously trying to hide them from him. But what wasn’t I trying to hide from him? A few cigarettes were nothing compared to certain other things I’d done.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” I replied, not wanting to fight at all. “Sorry. I can’t really smell it.”
“Well, trust me. You stink.”
The more he repeated it, the more my frustration grew. I didn’t want to fight, but it was seeming inevitable. “Well, should I go take a shower?”
“Nah, I’m hungry. Just… whatever. I’ll try to deal with it. Let’s go get lunch.”
He might have said he would deal with it, but the shortness of his words and the way he sprang from the bed without so much as kissing me said that he definitely wasn’t dealing with it very well. If this was a sign of things to come, I could only imagine how he would handle my bigger lies.
Still not wanting to argue with him any more than absolutely necessary, I stood up and began rummaging around my suitcase for something to wear. After some searching, I was dressed in jeans and a shirt that I really hoped smelled neither like smoke nor like Zac. Knowing my luck, he’d sneaked into the room and doused all my belongings in his cologne or something. I didn’t think that Zac actually wore cologne, but it still seemed like the sort of stunt he would pull.
Seamus re-emerged from the bathroom a moment later and I instinctively reached for his hand. He didn’t offer it. He hurried on past me, ignoring me completely as he shoved his wallet and cell phone into his pocket. Part of me wanted to believe that he was just getting ready to leave and wasn’t really ignoring me, but I could feel the tension in the air. I knew Shay was annoyed with me and that annoyance was manifesting itself in this immature ignoring thing.
I had finally found his imperfection, I supposed.
I didn’t really understand why he was being that way, though. Was it the smoking? Did that really bother him so much? Was he angry that I hadn’t joined him for the night, and then, that I had smoked while he was gone? Maybe he could just sense that I was lying to him about something – something more meaningful than a few cigarettes. I just didn’t know, and his entire demeanor told me it was best not to ask.
“Tay,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Are you coming?”
I glanced up and saw that he was already standing at the door, turning the knob over and over impatiently as he stared at me. I guess I must have drifted off in thought. I do that sometimes.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I replied, giving him the best smile I could manage. I was pretty sure it still wasn’t much, and Shay didn’t even try to return it.
Was this really how our relationship was going to fall apart? Because of a few cigarettes?
It seemed so ridiculous to even consider, but I couldn’t deny the tension between us as we left the hotel room and began our trek down the hallway. It was this huge, tangible thing, practically an actual wall separating us. Anyone could have seen it; we each hugged opposite walls as we walked, not coming close to each other at all.
It was just my luck, of course, that Zac’s door clicked open just before we reached it. He stepped out into the hallway and glanced at the two of us, walking so far apart that we might as well have been strangers. There was a tiny smirk on his face and I could tell that he was feeling a little smug about the scene in front of him. I wanted to shout out that it was his fault, but I knew that he would only be proud of himself.
And I knew that, really, it was my fault, too. Maybe even more than it was Zac’s.