Page 41 of The Liar in Room 5

“Glad you’ve enjoyed it. Too much ice cream? It’s hard to say I regret too much delicious, but I might need to do some extra time at the gym tomorrow.” Henry patted his belly like an old man. The only thing he was missing was some suspenders and a sign to get off his lawn.

“Oh, I love the gym,” I offered.

The second the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. I loathed the gym except for the sauna. Now the lie was out in the world, or at least Henry’s living room, and I’d be stuck dealing with reps and laps. I snuck a sidelong look at Henry. In a perfect world, there was a chance he hadn’t heard me and my lie would go unnoticed.

My silent wish wasn’t fulfilled because Henry was staring at me intently. His expression had morphed into something I couldn’t read. For Pete’s sake, when was I going to learn? Likely never because I hadn’t figured it out in the last twenty years.

“Drew, I’m going to make a wild guess here and say that isn’t true at all. Maybe you don’t hate it, but I don’t think you love it.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer.

If I admitted it wasn’t true, then I was a liar.

If I kept it up, then I was still a liar.

Either way, I was a liar, and that fact was about to be exposed in the most pointless way possible for the dumbest reason possible.

“I don’t know how to answer that.” As a stall tactic, it wasn’t the greatest, but it would do in a pinch. If I could figure out how to rewind the last ninety seconds, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

“The truth is fine.”

“Ugh, I don’t hate every part.”

“That’s a start. What part don’t you hate?”

“The sauna?”

I fully expected Henry to yell at me, which was ridiculous because the man hadn’t raised his voice once. He even managed to navigate California traffic without uttering a single fuck, so my worry was utterly unfounded, but here it was anyway.

“So the non-gym part?”

“Okay, but when you say it like that…” I trailed off because I was about to make a point without a distinction, like my granddad used to say.

A smart person would have left well enough alone, but as it turns out, that wasn’t a description of me. Instead, I found every bit of courage I could to ask what I really wanted to know. “Are you mad?”

“That you don’t like the gym? I don’t care. It makes me sad that you think you have to turn yourself into something you’re not for any reason. If you like it, cool. If you don’t, still cool, and we’ll avoid it if we can. Either way, I still like you.”

“It’s just…habit?”

“Or maybe self-preservation?”

“Well, hell, this wasn’t how I wanted our evening to end,” I said grumpily.

Henry twirled his fingers in my hair. Over the last several weeks, it had grown out and was shaggy and curling at the ends. Every time I thought about getting it cut, I told myself I wanted to see what it would look like grown out just a little more. Henry being able to twist it around his fingers meant I wasn’t cutting it anytime soon.

“How did you want it to end?”

Oh, for Pete’s sake. I needed to figure out how to keep my thinking thoughts inside my head where they belonged. I knew it was pointless, but I shrugged anyway.

“You know…” I waved my hand in the air like that answered the question.

“Can I tell you how I wanted it to end?”

“Please.”

“Like this.”

And then he kissed me.