Page 63 of Bitter Lies

With the long curls flowing down my back and a healthy dose of my armor, dark purple eye makeup, I plaster on a grim smile and greet Griffin’s parents with a good dose of suspicion.

Why am I here? Griffin made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want me to come all those years ago, so why the special invitation now? And when I say special, I mean my mother came into my room two hours ago and said that Griffin insisted I come. Why?

We have nothing to say to each other. We never did.

“Halsey, you look lovely,” Mrs. Hathaway says with an absent smile, already moving on to the next couple in line.

Forgoing an answer, I step beyond the threshold and relinquish my jacket, feeling distinctly out of place amongst the other guests. I’m wearing my best dress and heels, and I’m still gauche next to the other partygoers.

Whatever. Brushing my hair back from my face, I follow my parents around for an hour, noting Max disappeared as soon as we arrived, probably to hang out with Griff and the younger crowd.

Griffin has a room set up somewhere else in the house with more modern music and games if tradition remains. Too bad I’m stuck wandering around with my fucking parents. Another punishment, perhaps?

After a while of brooding, I slip out onto the back terrace and down the path, removing my heels and sneaking across the lawn. Fuck it. Griffin got his way, but he can’t force me to hang out with our elders while they party it up somewhere else.

With a wary glance back, I see no one is following and find our fort where it still remains all this time later.

Climbing up the ladder, which is comprised of wood slats nailed into the tree, I mutter a profanity when my skirt flies up, baring me to the fucking world, which is thankfully empty, although the irony doesn’t go unnoticed.

I’m always flayed wide as everyone picks at what’s left of my soul.

I emerge into the wood structure with an oomph, pulling my legs over the lip and gazing around. The fort is more of a luxury condo than anything because although we began the endeavor with a makeshift version when he first moved here, Griff’s parents bought a real tree house not long after, to his dismay and embarrassment, and set it up in a majestic tree overlooking the back vista soon after.

I think Griff always yearned to be just like the rest of us, but how could he ever be? I’m not talking about riches. He was just everything from the beginning.

During the day, you can see acres of rolling green grass, interspersed with more trees and fancy hedges cut with precision.

Although I spy a few new additions, including a pile of titty mags in the corner, to which I smirk with amusement, the fort is largely the same. Sleeping bags are still piled in another corner, folded up neatly for the next round of gazing at the stars. A skylight was installed, fancy enough that you can pull back the roof and look into the night sky with nothing in between.

Opening the little minifridge complete with actual fucking electricity, I help myself to a beer, another new addition, and unroll a sleeping bag before lying on top and staring into the darkness.

It’s beautiful here with no clouds, nor smog and city lights to break up the view.

For a while, I sip on the beer and enjoy the peace, slipping over old times in my head before moving away from them when they become too torturous.

This used to be the place we escaped to, at first the three of us until Max slowly disappeared from the picture, and looking back on it now, I suppose some of his alienation can be laid at our feet.

But Griffin was the center of my world, and I ignored the people around me who should have been just as important. Hell, before he came, I had friends, although I struggled with perpetual shyness, all of whom faded when he came along and who weren’t interested in rekindling old ties once he dropped me.

It’s hard to reconcile the guy now whose cruelty is born out of darkness with the boy I knew before. I don’t understand, and it makes me reexamine all the times before when he was nothing but my friend.

Was it all a lie? Did I miss the signs? I don’t know, but it clouds those things I clung to when I had nothing else, making even this something to regret. I think maybe he never truly loved me, and that’s the most devastating of all.

In a way, he defines those years for me, and if I don’t have that, what do I have?

“Hiding?” Griffin asks silkily, appearing through the threshold.

Glancing his way, I sigh and look back to the sky, mourning the loss of the peace that for once was soothing my soul. He returns my absent stare with a smirk as I turn away.

“Perhaps.” I’m so tired, I hardly stir when he steals the beer from my grip and drinks it down with a grimace.

He’s dressed in nice jeans and a button-down shirt, his tanned arms yummy under the stark white fabric. I allow myself a brief once over, admiring his beauty before turning away with a silent sigh.

“This shit is old.”

“Mm,” I murmur.

“What are you doing in here?”

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