VERITY

Oh crap, I told the truth again.

Victoria’s hand freezes in the air, midway through applying bright pink lipstick, and her stunned expression reflects in the mirror. I stand behind and cringe at her reaction to my words.

“I mean, your hair’s already a lovely colour, and your new highlights look—" Stop, Verity. "I didn’t mean your hair looks bad, just unusual.” I fight chewing on my knuckles to stop myself spouting any more unwelcome truth to my work colleague.

I hate lying.

Absolutely cannot deal with people who lie. Like, lose my shit cannot deal with. My inability to tell a lie myself, even the tiny white variety, kills me too. Why couldn't my parents choose a different virtue to name me after? Hope, Faith, Grace? I'd take anything but the name meaning truth, because I'm sure this cursed me to lose friends due to my blunt truthful nature. Took me years to realise when girls say "be honest" that this is code for "don’t tell somebody their ass does in fact look big in that." I glance at Victoria’s sour face beneath her unfortunate hair.

Why do girls ask me these questions? Can’t they see my lacking interest in all this? My long brown hair sees a pair of scissor once a year; I've never coloured it and styling equals brushing the thick mane into a ponytail. I'm a jeans and T-shirt girl and avoid high heels at all costs because they draw attention to my taller than average, slim figure. Make-up? I have no clue what suits me so I stick to occasional lip gloss and mascara.

My obsessions lie elsewhere and not with my appearance.

“Well, I like the colour," Victoria replies in a cool voice as she inspects her lipstick.

I calculate how many seconds it would take to vacate the bathrooms as the uncomfortable heat builds inside.

Her friend, Charlotte, exits a stall behind me and shakes her blue silk shirtsleeves away from her wrists before flicking on the tap. “What’s wrong, babe?” asks Charlotte as she rinses her hands and shakes water from her fingertips as if it’s poison.

“Verity doesn’t like my new hair colour.” She throws me a disdainful look.

The telecommunications company I work for doesn’t have a uniform, but some girls manage to turn the day into a daily fashion competition. I often admire them, but for their commitment to perfection and not their work status. No, I admire anybody who climbs out of bed an hour earlier than necessary to torture themselves with straightening tongs. From the back, I can't tell Charlotte and Victoria apart, they're so similar. I believe a lot of weird crap, clones included, but despite their almost identical appearance, Charlotte and Victoria are only clones of the fashionista variety. If scientists scientifically engineered people, they’d choose higher intelligence—and beauty that doesn’t come in tubes from Sephora.

“So, lovely, are you coming to Dana’s party tonight?” asks Victoria.

Her pointed comment stabs greater than the rejection.

Another side effect of my inability to lie is I have no social life. Partly my fault for staying in the small town I've spent my twenty-one years in, while friends moved away to bigger and brighter lives. The ones who did stay have kids now, and I'm not keen on spending time around happy families.

Nope, I live with my cat in a flat above a shop, where I head home after work and watch bad TV or work on my blog. Some would call me a “conspiracy theorist.” I prefer the term “looking for the truth.” The corporations and governments present a world they want everyone to believe exists, hiding the corruption and their interference. Who's really in control? It doesn't matter who we vote for in our democracy, the same background people run the whole show. Illuminati? Yeah, I'm pretty damn sure they exist.

My weird obsession I talk about at any opportunity suggests another reason I'm rarely invited to “'clone wars” or whatever the hell these girls do when they get together.

“I am. Did you invite the new guy to the party?” asks Charlotte.

Victoria rubs her lips together and touches the corner of her mouth. “Seriously? He works with the geeks and never speaks to me.”

Another comment thrown in my direction—the girl buried in the support section who avoids talking to others.

But I know who they’re talking about. I don’t know him per se, but his arrival several weeks ago ruffled feathers and set hormones ablaze. There's no possibility this guy could duck under the radar, if not for his height alone. I haven't stood close enough to him to gauge our height difference, but from a distance, I'd say he's well over six feet tall. Shirt and trousers designed for office work don't equal sexy, but they certainly don't hide his solid muscle.

I admit to sneaking a look at his ass one day last week, which I can also give a big thumbs up to. I bit off the plastic end of my pen in surprise when he turned around to look at me, and I spent the rest of the day with blue ink smearing my lips. Amusement sparkled in his eyes as if he were aware I was perving on him, but his heavy browed face held friendliness, rather than an arrogance often accompanying smoking-hot dudes.

"Well, he finally spoke to me, and I found out his name is Heath." Charlotte throws Victoria a sly smile. "Unfortunately he was too busy to stop and chat for long."

I smile at the floor in satisfied amusement that he's not interested in her flirting.

"So you didn't invite him to the party?" asks Victoria.

"No. I didn't have a chance." Charlotte wipes her hands on a paper towel and picks up her purse. "Maybe next time."

"He said that or you're guessing?"

Charlotte glances at me and leans forward to whisper something in her friend's ear. They giggle, the noise grating like nails down a chalkboard. Without another word to me, the girls walk away. The heavy bathroom door clunks closed leaving me and my truthful mouth behind.