TWO

 

LIAM

 

I couldn’t help but feel my face turn into a smile when Mags walked in. Every day for the past year, we’d have breakfast together before we headed off to school. If we didn’t head over together, we would meet up here and she’d always show up a few minutes late at the very least, but I could never stay mad at her for too long. Being late was just Mags being herself and she’s also the only one who could ever tolerate my oddities.

She was also always so busy trying to do everything she could to prep for college, she ended up being perpetually late. She blamed me, of course, always saying that we ate at the café too early in the morning but that was just the kind of friendship we had.

As she walked towards the table, she looked odd and had an unusually big grin on her face. She took off her winter coat and dramatically draped it over the back of her chair. She looked nice as usual, she wore one of my long t-shirts and her usual black leggings once she took the long coat off. She was probably still tired from staying up so late arguing with me on the phone about me having to leave for the summer and drank an energy drink or something.

“What’s wrong with your face?” I teased.

“You will never guess who I just ran into,” she said excitedly.

Right away, she gulped down half of her orange juice and then tore away a large piece of her toast and scarfed it down quickly. Her cheeks were unusually flushed and she wasn’t her normal crabby self so I didn’t have the slightest clue.

“Let me guess. How about one of them celebrities hanging on your walls? Like that Justin bloke you’re so madly in love with.” I guessed.

“Haha, you’re so funny. This is serious.” Margaret said sarcastically as she took more bites of her buttered toast. She was always a crabby person in the mornings so it was unusual to see the animation in her movements and voice in the morning.

“Who, then?” I asked. Mags always had a crazy story to tell every morning and yet she always said that I was the funny one. She didn’t realize how good she was at story telling let alone how funny she was. She had an ability to take a grim situation and turn it into a standup comedy routine.

“Roger,” she squealed as she gripped my hand tightly. She sounded so thrilled even if I wasn’t in the least bit after hearing his name.

“Who is he again?” I tried to remain indifferent. Hearing about him every single day was getting frustrating because I didn’t like the guy at all. I knew who Roger was but I didn’t like him because he was bad news.

Mags wasn’t the type of girl that dated too much or was sloppy about it, but she certainly made some poor decisions in her romantic life. She was always blaming it on the guys she had crushes on or had a date with and how it was his faults that they only wanted one thing. She was partially right about that, but wasn’t entirely their fault, she was the one that had the finally say. No one ever told her she was forced to have crushes on any of them but that’s the type she kept picking.

I wished she could see that she deserved someone so much better than the type she chose to be infatuated with every couple of months. I tried to tell her this every once in a while but I didn’t want to force the idea down her throat. I also didn’t really want her to get the impression that I was into her or anything like that. I cared about her a lot but Mags wouldn’t date someone like me and besides, my friendship with her was what was most important to me and I wasn’t going to let anything or anyone ruin that.

“You remember Roger, don’t you? I told you about him a few days ago. He’s Corey’s cousin, you know the college guy?”

Of course I remembered, how could I even possibly forget? A few days ago she gushed about him all not long about the day she met him for the first time and everything they had talked about when he visited her at the coffee every other day. She was so overjoyed this week, her parents asked us to keep it little quieter because she was so loud when she gushed about him.

 “Oh yeah, that’s right, he was the one that I had a bad feeling about,” I told her back. He was the kind of guy that was way too full of himself and also the type that thought they could do no wrong. Guys like him hurt the girls they dated and I knew he was going to end up hurting Mags.

“You keep saying that but you never like anyone I’m into. You think you’re the only saint at the school.” I rolled my eyes.

“That’s because I am.” I teased, trying to change the subject. I figured if I can get her to stop thinking about him then maybe she’d forget he ever existed. “I can’t help it if I think he sucks.”

I didn’t have much to say about Roger or anyone she was interested in that particular month other than what I really wanted to say which was to stop trying to date or to choose me. I knew Mags was way out of my league so I tried to keep any details about my feelings for her out of my own head. I wished it was easier for me and somehow find myself into other girls but I wasn’t interested in any of them. I liked Mags and she was enough for me.

“Anyway, enough about Roger, there wasn’t much to tell this time but I’ll update you as it progresses.”

“Great.” I muttered but I was fortunate she didn’t hear me. She was too busy digging into her breakfast platter.

“What about you, did you ever ask out that girl from your environmental club?” Mags asked me as the waitress refilled our glasses with orange juice.

I wish I had a story to tell but I didn’t really have one worthy of speaking about. I made up a story about a girl named Clare I was interested in that was in my environmental club but she didn’t really exist. I was just tired of Mags trying to set me up all of the time or pressuring me to date more often. I just wasn’t interested in anyone else and I had other things that I was far more interested in.

I couldn’t tell her that it was a lie, I had kept up this charade for a few weeks and the more she asked about it the more lies I told and I was just sinking deeper and deeper in it.  So much so that I spent any evening or moment that I wasn’t with her drafting up an elaborate story to tell her that would ultimately end in things not working out with the imaginary girl.

This wasn’t the first girl I’ve made up just to stop Mags from trying to set me up. In fact, my entire dating history was a lie. I really didn’t want to know that I’ve never had a girlfriend and I’ve never done anything worthy of telling with one either so I made up these stories so I wouldn’t feel like such a loser and I just really wanted her to stop bugging me about it.

“It was great,” I said sarcastically as I chewed my omelet. I wanted to say it was one of the worst dates I’ve ever been on but the second that I ended this new façade I had her believing she’d start annoying me to date more and how there was plenty of fish in the seas so this time I wanted the story to go on for as long as it could.

“It was good? Oh that’s so great to hear!” Mags said as she sipped her orange juice. I picked up mine at the same time, avoiding eye contact. “Wait a minute, you’re lying.”

She caught me. Mags always knew when I wasn’t being completely honest with her. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I told her firmly. I took a deep breath, knowing very well she wasn’t going to stop pestering me until I told her the truth about what was really going on with me and why I made everything up.

“Liam.” she eyed me.

“If I tell you the truth, then you have to promise to stop bugging me about things like this.”

“You know that won’t ever happen, so spill it.”

“I made her up.” I confessed.

“What? So environmental girl doesn’t really exist?”

“Nope, she doesn’t exist. I made her up just so you could stop bugging me about finding a girlfriend. I don’t want one right now but you don’t seem to be getting the hint so I made her up so you could sod off about it but you kept asking about her so I felt forced to keep making things up.”

“I’m sorry Liam, I just want what’s best for you.” she apologized.

“I know you do but I’ve had enough with it. Besides, you know I’m focused on joining the Peace Corps and once I do, I’ll have no time for any of that.” I explained.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I get it. I won’t bug you about dating anymore.” she apologized again. “What about the other girls? Were they even real?”

“No.”

“What? So all of those stories you told me were all made up?”

“Yep, all made up.”

“They were all so elaborate, there is no way you could have conceived those.” Mags gasped in shock.

“Nope, I made them all up.”

“Wow, you should be a writer.” she exhaled.

“I’m not really interested in writing, you know that. Well, I’m not interested in writing things that don’t really matter in the world.” I shrugged.

After my confession, Mags and I kept quiet while we ate the rest of our order before she had to get to summer school and I had to head back home to finish packing before my family took off to visit relatives back in my hometown.

“You know you could be a bad boy, Liam,” Mags said suddenly as she finished the rest of her orange juice. A part of me felt like she needed to pace herself with the juice, she was starting to get too many wild ideas in her head.

“Here we go again.” I rolled my eyes, hoping she didn’t go into explaining what new idea she was brewing. I wanted to just talk about something far more interesting than our love lives.

“No, I’m serious Liam. Not all bad boys are, you know, bad. It’s not necessarily about being a jerk to women or playing a sport. There is just something to be said about a guy who oozes raw athleticism, charm and charisma. It almost always has nothing to do with how good they look physically.” she explained.

I knew a part of her was right, but I didn’t want to believe anything she had to say. I didn’t want to start thinking about things that went against everything I believed in as a man.

“I’ll be you that if I give you a makeover when you return at the end of the summer before school starts, your whole life will change for the better,” she joked.

“No way, I’m not participating in any more of your wild ideas,” I said. “I don’t need a makeover.”

“Everyone could use a makeover, even me.”

I didn’t agree with that statement. Mags was one most amazing girls that I knew and there was nothing I would have ever changed about her.

“Liam, you’re a great guy but you just need a new fresh coat of paint!” Mags said with wide eyes. She was right in some respects but not something I totally wanted to hear nor talk about right now.

“Mags, just drop it,” I told her. I didn’t get annoyed often and I rarely was with her but right now I just wanted to either change the subject or cut our breakfast short and go home.

“Come on, what do you have to lose?” she grinned manically.

Mags was the type of girl that liked to prove a point but was also empathetic. I feared that maybe deep down she saw me as a sap that she felt sorry for.

“Here’s the deal, I want to turn you into the ultimate bad boy, the kind that women obsess over,” Mags giggled. “If you let me do this just once, I promise I will never bug you about any woman ever again.

“If I agree to this, you have to keep that promise and leave me alone about girls, forever.”

“I promise.”

“Find, you win. When I get back from summer vacation, you can do your makeover thing with me.” I agreed relunctantly.