Page 10 of The Liar in Room 5

“That would have made me useful,” I muttered.

I regretted my accidentally truthful answer as soon as the words passed my lips. Henry drew up short and stopped walking immediately. I stood there, wishing I could find a cliff to fall off of, when he grabbed my hand and led me to a park bench just off the path. It was surrounded by branches from a shrub that I remembered my mom had in our yard when I was a kid. Hydrangea, maybe? Anyway, I took a picture to look it up later.

“I’d very much like to hear about it.” Henry made his request with such certainty that I forgot to give him the curated version of the story that I’d been practicing since I’d decided I’d been lying to myself for about twenty years, give or take.

“I was a companion,” I answered grudgingly.

“Like a caretaker? That’s pretty cool. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t… Actually, no, I know I wouldn’t have the patience to handle that.”

Oh great, now he thought I was noble instead of the leech I apparently was.

“Not exactly, it was slightly less altruistic than…” Suddenly the pebbling in the pathway required deep and thorough examination. “More like a professional boyfriend.”

“Like a sex worker?”

The lack of judgment floored me. It was like Henry asked if I wanted mustard on my hot dog.

“Umm, not quite.”

“I’m afraid I need some clarification because me taking guesses in the dark isn’t working.” His tone turned from pragmatic to kind.

What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

“It’s complicated because I thought I was a boyfriend.” I sighed.

I stood and began pacing as I tried to explain. “We’d stop seeing each other because people break up, right? And then I’d meet someone new, and we’d hit it off, and things would happen…” I trailed off because the stupidity of it hit when I said it aloud. “Oh God.”

“What?”

“I just realized… Oh God… Oh shit…” I gasped for words as I had this life-altering epiphany on a gravel trail with a relative stranger.

Henry led me back to the bench and gently encouraged me to sit. He carefully pushed my head down a little.

I braced myself with my elbows on my knees while Henry rubbed circles on my back. If there’d been a more embarrassing moment in my life, I couldn’t think of it.

“What did you realize?”

“They passed me on. They said it was because they didn’t care who I dated after we broke up, and if it was a friend, it was fine because we’re all adults, but…”

“Whoa, whoa…”

“I’m like a…a…a meat and cheese platter.” The horror of my realization was the worst. I wasn’t a boyfriend. I was a hors d’oeuvre.

“First, I happen to like a good snack tray. Second, people date who they know, so I don’t think dating people you’re friends with is so strange,” Henry said firmly.

This was where I’d reached in my life. Here I was in the woods with a man I barely knew, waiting for his brother to arrive, and I’d randomly discovered I’d been sex-worker adjacent for the last twenty years. None of this had been on my Bingo card when I woke up this morning.

“This is… Yeah…I don’t even know.”

“If my opinion matters, and it likely shouldn’t, I think you need to be a little easier on yourself.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who just realized how damn useless you’ve been for half your life,” I spat.

I needed to be nicer to the person who was my ride home. I slapped a hand over my mouth.

Ope. What a mess.

“Look at me.”