“Candor” by Kindall Gray

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I went to Brett’s work and asked him, point-blank, what he saw in his new girlfriend Stella.

His eyes widened as I approached him, like he wasn’t happy to see me. (Is there anything worse than a lover shifting course? There is no way to make them see you as they once did: as sexually and intellectually intriguing.) He even did that thing where he used his thumb and forefinger to smooth down his bushy eyebrows while baring his tiny teeth like a rabbit. My only signal, during our relationship, that he was uncomfortable.

“Kat, why are you here?” he said. “I thought we agreed not to speak for a while.” 

“I want to have a drink with you,” I said, as calmly as possible. 

We were outside his office where he worked as a civil engineer, designing roads, bridges, and water supply systems for overseas firms. He made six figures, though you’d never know it, based on his penchant for Blimpie Subs and Groupons. It had been two months since he left me and moved in with Stella. 

He looked at me. “Is that a good idea?”

I took him by the shoulders and shook him, well, as much as a 150-pound woman can shake a 200-pound man, and said, “If you don’t have a drink with me, I don’t know what I’ll do. I still love you.”

When I said that, he smiled. He’d been overweight in middle school, insecure and unpopular, and wanted to affirm his appeal any chance he got. He also had difficulty asserting himself with me, a fact he’d admitted during the lone couples therapy session we’d attended shortly before he left me.

“Okay,” he said, “Okay. Let’s go to the place with the coffee.”

“Wine,” I said. “We’ll go to the place with the wine. Maison Richard.”

✶

A week before my meeting with Brett, I ordered Candor from Amazon. The description:

REAL Truth Seeking Serum. Drop into your lover’s drink or foodstuff.

Within seconds they will answer all of your questions honestly.

There were over 5,000 reviews of the product, and the overall quality score was 4.5 out of 5. Really does work, said Ada from New York. This isn’t a scam, said Ron from Virginia. May give the victim a stomachache, warned Mohammad from Maryland, but my wife admitted she did not love me and so I divorced her. Saved a lot of wasted time! 

The package arrived at my door the day before the infamous Brett lunch, as if the universe wanted me to drug him: a small cardboard box with my name and address on it and a return shipping label. I took it inside my apartment and hastily ripped open the seal, more eager than I’d expected to be.

The amber liquid floated in a glass bottle with a white dropper. The bottle itself was heavy and old-fashioned. Two drops per six ounces of water or food. I had enough to last for several months—but I only needed enough for Brett. I had purchased the serum in order to get the truth out of him. 

Spending money on an unproven product also excited me in an almost erotic way. Sure, Candor had a decent Amazon rating, but for all I knew those reviews were paid or written by bots. In many parts of my life, I appreciated facts and evidence. I was an academic as well as an atheist. I argued with my mother when she said global warming was an idea invented by Toyota so they could sell more electric cars. I told my students that the fate of the world depended on their careful consideration and understanding of research. 

All of this made my desire to believe in the unbelievable even stranger. Perhaps it came down to being raised in a non-religious family and wanting to have faith in something I had never seen with my own eyes. I worried that scholars, scientists, writers, doctors, and lawyers didn’t understand the world entirely. We pretended to. There was Jesus and Roswell and the pyramids. There was the Yeti in Nepal and Bigfoot in Washington and the Loch Ness Monster in the Scottish Highlands and the potato chip that looked like Mother Teresa in Mexico. 

Yes, the world was full of mysterious things. Part of me believed that maybe the serum could work. Maybe the serum could be part of the world’s mysteriousness.

The serum also gave me an excuse to contact Brett and perhaps force him to divulge his secrets. I really wanted to know why he left me. The real reason. Not just the other woman.

The breakup went like this: Brett told me he didn’t think we had a future together and that he’d met somebody new. A week later, he was cramming underwear and dress shirts into a suitcase and babbling about paying the next month’s rent and letting me keep all the furniture. I hadn’t been sleeping since he booked it, and I’d reduced myself to going to the apartment he shared with Stella and dragging a key across his car door and smashing a cage-free egg into his windshield. I was a tenure-track English professor at the University of Arizona and ran undergrad seminars on Herman Melville as well as fiction workshops for the graduate creative writing program, but I could no longer coordinate discussions or socialize with students individually without getting tremendously dizzy and losing my speech. 

The only thing that made life tolerable was thinking about Brett and following him on social media. He posted pictures of Stella occasionally, but mostly he was silent. Human beings repeat behaviors that bring them the most pleasure: In lieu of any pleasurable options, I’d resorted to clicking on Facebook photos, trying to piece together the last five years of my life. What happened? How did he go from posting pictures of me in my bikini to posting pictures of Stella in her bikini? How did I go from being a successful writer and professor to feeling like my identity and happiness depended on solving the mystery of why Brett left me for another woman?

Many people—including my own mother, whom I saw regularly but was not emotionally close to—might argue that Brett left me for cliché reasons: Stella was 28; I was 40. Stella was a receptionist; I was financially independent and had a demanding career. I hated the idea that men secretly preferred unintimidating women and so I hoped that the reason he left me was more complicated. I could think of a few examples of men passing up perfectly beautiful, successful women in their forties in favor of slightly stooped, pimpled girls in their twenties who worked at thrift shops or cafés part time. Then again, that data was anecdotal.

✶

We drove separately. I ordered two cold poached eggs on a bed of baby greens, and he ordered quiche Lorraine and a bottle of sauvignon blanc, the cheapest they sold. 

He leaned back in his seat and said, almost bemusedly, “I’m not sure this meeting is appropriate, Kat.”

“I’m not sure you get to decide,” I said. “You owe me a drink.”

As I spoke, my entire body radiated heat. I wasn’t sure if I was going to vomit or pass out. Like I was biting down on tinfoil, blood filling my mouth. That’s how it had always been, the entire five years we’d been together: I was sad or mad or nervous and he was seemingly calm. Even after our worst fights, he’d eat a huge hamburger or read a newspaper cover to cover. I’d sob for hours. 

“Would you mind getting my jacket out of my car?” I asked abruptly. He had to leave the table, for just a moment, so I could put the truth serum into his drink. “I’m freezing.”

“Excuse me?” he said.

Just then, his eyes flickered up toward the front entrance of the restaurant and widened with recognition.

A man with thinning yellow hair came over. Brett shook his hand furiously, the way men only do with other men. I could barely hear their words; then again, the inside of my head was filled with loud, rushing water. I lowered my own glass of wine and took the bottle of serum out of my pocket. Drip, drip. Then, I exchanged our glasses.

The old man left. The luck: Brett seeing his colleague at this restaurant, at this moment.

“Did you switch our drinks?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. He didn’t seem alarmed exactly. More confused.

“No. What do you take me for?” I laughed loudly.

“Anyhow,” he said, “what have you been up to? Besides teaching?”

With that, I told him about my novel, to pass the time until the serum took effect. A story about a woman in her fifties who travels to Algeria after having a dream that her husband, a drug addict who disappeared several years earlier, is living there in disguise. It didn’t matter if she found her husband or didn’t; it was a journey of faith. Brett had read multiple drafts over the course of our relationship. He was not a bad reader, exactly. He’d comment on the characters, on the plot. He’d say it was interesting. I’d push further: What should I change? Does the opening of the second chapter confuse you? What about the gender stuff? I don’t know, he’d say. It’s a good book.

“Is she still an unreliable narrator?” Brett asked.

“She’s perfectly clear-headed,” I said. “Since when are you using that kind of jargon?”

“Since now,” he interrupted. “Is that why we’re here, so you could tell me about your book? I always liked it.” He poured a fresh glass of wine and topped me off. We loved to drink.

“Are you flirting with me?” I asked. 

“Let’s not get carried away,” he said.

I took a deep breath. I had to dig in, deep, push past the superficial. I had to see if the serum was working. “Why do you love Stella?”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a loaded question. And if I answer, it will be the opposite of flirting.”

“Answer carefully,” I said.

I observed him: His usually puffy eyes looked clear and young. His face glowed, like the serum was coming out of his pores, cleansing his soul.

Then, it happened: He started to blab. “Let’s see,” he began. “I first noticed her because she really is a wonderful office manager.”

“Office manager? I thought she was a secretary.”

“She prefers office manager. Isn’t secretary kind of an outdated term? She’s meticulous, thoughtful, organized, level-headed. She was on the honor roll in high school and yet didn’t go to college, which is kind of badass. She did modeling work for Sears a few years ago. I know, I was embarrassed when she first told me. But then I saw the pictures and I was actually … proud. She’s a hard worker. It isn’t easy to get those modeling jobs, even silly catalog shit. You really open yourself up to shame and humiliation. And she did. She gave the money to her goddamned mother, who raised her alone. She’s utterly immune to criticism, she’s not competing with other people, she doesn’t care how she’s viewed. She does what she does because she thinks it’s right, not to gain some elite status or whatever. Stella cares more about growing as a person than advancing socially or professionally. She has character.”

“Character?” I said. A sensation like rubber bands snapping against my face.

He nodded. “Yes. That’s what people like you can’t seem to accept. That a person can be loved for something other than intelligence and status, that they can be loved for, yes, being smart, but also for being sweet and kind and giving and selfless and faithful and dependable and all those wonderful things that Stella is. When I was younger, I dated women who were on my level in terms of education, women like you. It’s boring, debating about politics and books and theater all the time. Or, in our case, books. All you ever talked about were books. And you rejected every opinion I had about them. You were an insufferable know-it-all our entire relationship. You had few friends and I always wanted to tell you that if you’d just be less condescending, people would like you more. I only pretended to enjoy poetry so as not to bear your wrath and I agreed with all your opinions on your favorite poets because I knew it was the way into your heart.”

I shook my head. “All those poems we read together … all the readings you attended. That couldn’t have been fake.” Poetry had been one of our common bonds, other than food; we had always been able to talk about it. He liked T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. His taste wasn’t original, but it was good.

He laughed. “I guess I was a rat,” he said. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings and of course I wanted to impress you and make you happy. Those are good things, right?”

“What do you talk about with Stella?” I asked. 

“I talk about Netflix with Stella, I talk about food, I talk about celebrities, I talk about my favorite band, and I feel smart, damn it, I feel like the smartest person when I’m with her. Why must Stella be an intellectual?”

I curled my toes underneath the table. “Well, there are a lot of reasons for being intellectual. For one thing, it makes you more curious, a better researcher, a better conversationalist,” I drifted off, unable to summon anything else.

He smiled and tipped his head back so he was dreamily gazing at the ceiling. “Stella’s hair is blonde,” he continued.

There was sweat beading on his forehead. He patted his face with a napkin. His eyes drooped. The youthful glow had turned into post-marathon exhaustion. For the first time, I seriously considered the side effects of the serum. It was crazy enough that it might be working; now I wondered if it could kill him. That wouldn’t be so bad.

“I’m not looking at you anyway,” I said. “I’m just listening. What else?”

“Last but not least,” he said. “Stella is great in bed. She’s passive but not too passive, sweet-eyed, child-like, but not in a porn-y way, not in a creepy way, in a real way, like, she’s just naturally vulnerable, you know? I won’t go into specifics or anything, I’ll just say she makes me feel powerful but also protective, like I could break her if I wanted to, only I won’t, because I’m a good person. You were passive in that phony way, or maybe more like a frigid way, and it wasn’t very erotic. You just lay there with a judgmental look in your eye, as if you were memorizing my mistakes for later. Remember when you bought lingerie? Can I tell you now, that it was pathetic? You weren’t pathetic, you really weren’t, you were funny and I thought your quirks were cute for a long time, I loved you for a long time, but the lingerie: It was pathetic.”

I’d promised myself not to get angry, no matter what he said, but there’s only so much truth a person can take. While Brett had been many things, incredibly cruel wasn’t one of them. Well. Except when he left me. “What did you expect?” I said. “You asked me to be more adventurous in bed, to wear a corset, like I was some performing circus monkey. Of course I was awkward and pathetic.”

“We all have bad moments,” he said. He sat back in his seat, put his hands on top of his thighs, and shrugged. He was no longer sweating, but his face was ashen. “Is that enough? Does that clear everything up? Because those are the reasons. Those are really the main reasons I love her.”

“Thank you for your honesty,” I said, draining my wine glass and then standing up to pour myself some more.

“You don’t need to stand,” he said. “People are looking at you.”

I poured my glass so full that when I brought it to my lips wine spilled over the top. Wine dribbled down my chin, onto the table. I sat back down. 

“You know,” he said, “I think the wine’s bad. Slow your roll.” He pushed away his glass. “I’m not sure I can eat. It’s like I’ve been drugged.”

“Slow your roll?” I said. Like him, I was vaguely nauseous, but for entirely different reasons. “Since when do you use that phrase? Does Stella say that?”

As if on cue, the food arrived.

“Cracked pepper?” the waiter inquired.

“No,” Brett and I said at the same time.

“That looks terrible,” Brett said, pointing to my plate.

I stared down at my salad. He was right: watery cold poached eggs and depressingly wilted greens. 

To spite him, I devoured my meal. The cold yolk reminded me of mucus, and I suppressed the urge to spit it out.

Brett suggested we split the bill. As he fished out his credit card, he said, “It’s not really my responsibility to pay since we’re no longer together.”

“I didn’t ask you to pay.”

“You said I owed you a drink.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” I handed him a fifty-dollar bill.

“This wasn’t very fun,” Brett said as we walked outside into the late afternoon sunshine.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. I turned away from him without looking at him. I never wanted to look at him again. I was talking to a stranger, or maybe just the real Brett, who had been hiding in plain sight our entire relationship.

In the car, I felt a deep sense of shame, the sort I hadn’t experienced since I read my mother’s diary when I was ten years old and learned she thought I was “fat like a cherub” and ate ice cream to spite her. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror afterward and wondered who invented diaries and journals anyway, the whole notion of being honest in a tiny notebook.

Back in my apartment, I showered until my skin turned lobster red. The burning sensation distracted me from my humiliation. The bathroom mirror steamed up, and the water turned cold.

Afterward, I sat naked on the couch with my laptop. I logged onto Amazon and looked at the reviews for Candor, as if they might clarify what I had just experienced. I was in shock. Shocked by what Brett had said. Shocked the serum worked. He had never been so candid before. In fact, during our relationship, he generally shifted conversations away from his opinion. Perhaps that is what sealed us together: He was agreeable, and I took charge. The serum changed that.

Many people, fifty-two percent to be exact, had rated the serum five out of five stars. The lower scores were either because the buyer felt the serum didn’t work or because it gave them or their loved ones a stomachache. No reports of anything serious. Now I just had to find a way to deal with the truth. Or whatever people call the cesspool of ideas and beliefs that fuel our choices day to day.

I had planned to grade papers, but instead I held the bottle of serum in my hands for a long time, smelling it, tasting just a little bit on my tongue. Rosewater and sunscreen. How did a small lab in China manufacture a product which dramatically impacted a person’s ability to censor their own thoughts? Once again, the mysteries of the world were outside my understanding. Though I supposed LSD, mushrooms, and antipsychotics altered people’s minds in extraordinary ways; maybe Candor wasn’t a mystery or a miracle, or maybe all mind-altering substances were a mystery and a miracle.

✶

In the week following the disastrous lunch at Maison Richard, I woke up repeatedly in the middle of the night. What did my other exes think of me? Did they think I was pathetic? A know-it-all? Frigid? And what about my own mother? My students? My sisters?

I scrolled through pictures of myself on Facebook, trying to determine if I was truly “regular,” like Drew Barrymore (who I’d always thought was way above average, but even that basic fact was now in question). I didn’t bother looking at Stella’s profile picture; I knew how Brett felt about her, so it was no longer necessary to study her knees and armpits to ferret out her appeal.

At work, I felt alternately angry and paranoid. After each interaction with a student, I cycled through what had been said; I wondered when and if they’d been lying. I’d lived my entire life in denial, or maybe just ignorance: I’d believed that people, even exes, regarded me neutrally.

Yet Brett had said it: I had no real friends, beyond a handful from grad school. 

The only person I stayed in touch with was my mother, who came for a coffee visit the second week of each month. Brett had filled a much larger chasm in my life than I had ever realized.

I plotted how I’d get the serum into my mother’s coffee. I shot out of bed and wrote down a list of questions to ask her: Why did you stay with Dad until he died? Is Maggie your favorite daughter? Are you a lesbian? Do you really like G.W. Bush? How many men have you slept with? Were you disappointed with your life? Are you proud of me? Why did you never hug me when I was a child? It was a bad idea, horrible even, but I’d never been very good at regulating my behavior beyond pushing myself to work longer and harder at teaching and writing. In all reality, the serum was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

✶

My mother lived an hour away from Tucson, in a small town called Bisbee, in a small house with an herb garden in the windowsill. She’d been a schoolteacher most of her life and was now retired. She and my father raised their children in Marana, an underpopulated farming community just outside Tucson, because that’s where my father ran his medical practice. Where once she was beautiful with long blonde hair, now she was soft and pleasant looking with a silver pageboy. 

The morning of her visit, it rained. The moment I saw her, in her tan argyle sweater, jeans, and pink rubber boots, excitement tingled in my fingertips. I wondered if hypnotists felt the same about hypnotizing people. I’d blocked out the possibility of finding out painful or disappointing information, as I had with Brett. This time would be different.

She sat down in her usual spot by the window. I prepared our coffee, adding cream and sugar to both cups. I ducked into the back room. I put one drop into her coffee instead of two, as if this were a compromise. She was my mother, after all. I didn’t want her stomachache to be severe.

I brought coffee and a tray of cucumber sandwiches with lemon dill dressing. We discussed the price of groceries and an actress’s plastic surgery. There were awkward pauses (we had always been oddly formal together, never engaging in silly games or roughhousing even when I was small) and then finally: the bright, youthful look in her eye. The dewy complexion. 

“Mom,” I said. Suddenly the list of questions disappeared from my mind. “Do you think I’ve done well for myself?” I hoped she didn’t notice my grimace. It was a stupid question, the wrong one to start with. I’d lost control already.

She smiled tightly. “Oh, sure.” I’d always assumed that she thought I’d done well, despite her nitpicking about my marital status, my weight, my choice of apartment, my fashion choices; after all, I had published a book and worked at the University. “You’ve done a lot of things I never did. All that ambition. No time for marriage or kids.”

I saw this as an opening to redirect the conversation. I was losing my nerve. “Was Dad the love of your life?”

She shook her head. “No. I regret being with him. Marriage was an impulsive decision on my part. I settled, but your father settled too.”

“You think Dad settled?” This was hard for me to fathom: in old photos, she was slim and pretty in white boots like Nancy Sinatra, and Dad was short and fat with a weak mustache.

“If you put two average, boring people together, they’ll settle into a routine. Once you’re in a routine, you’re on your way to death.” She grinned weirdly. “It would have been better if one of us were special: very drunk, or very rich, or very talented.”

“Was I settling with Brett?”

“Hmm,” she said. “He was polite, had a good job. But so greedy and stingy! Never offered to pay for our dinner when we all went out. All in all, he was average. Like me. Like your dad.”

“Do you think I’m average?” I asked. 

“Yes,” my mother said. “Driven, to a point. But no Stephen King. All that stuff you wrote about the woman sitting in her apartment alone, looking out the window? Nothing happened.”

“Stephen King!” I repeated. “That’s apples and oranges.” My voice quavered with outrage, as it had during my conversation with Brett.

“I like Shawshank Redemption,” she explained, shrugging inoffensively, sipping her coffee, as though she understood that her comment had been hurtful, that it was best not to explicate further. Even under the influence of the serum, she was somewhat reserved.

“I write about bigger things, more important things … the crisis of the soul, the constraints of modern society!” I actually liked Shawshank Redemption, and I knew it was also about big and important things, but that was neither here nor there. Unlike my mother, I wasn’t restrained by the truth. 

As if on cue, she announced that she was tired, the coffee was bothering her stomach, and she’d see me in a few weeks.

“What else do you like about Stephen King?” I asked as she stood up. I grabbed her forearm.

“He’s not afraid to be liked,” she said. “He’s not pretentious, trying to prove he’s smarter than his readers.”

“Is that what I’m trying to do?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that.” She looked down at my hand. “But yes.” She shook me away. “I need to go now, Kat.” With that, she walked down the steps, onto the sidewalk, taking all her secrets and previously suppressed opinions with her. 

“Why didn’t you ever hug me?” I shouted.

“You knew I loved you,” she said over her shoulder. “Why did I need to hug you?”

“Don’t you think,” I said, “children deserve affection? It’s a scientific fact, isn’t it? There was that experiment in Romania—”

“Kat,” she cut me off. “Do you want a hug now?” She turned completely around now, standing in front of her car. Her face was open, pensive.

She stepped forward. I didn’t move. She put her arms around my shoulders, drew me close. An animal inside me, an animal needing safety and comfort. “Relax,” she said. “I never got hugged as a child either.” I thought I might throw up; instead I put my head on her shoulder. We embraced for a long time. It felt good. When she drove away, I burst into tears.

✶

Frankly, Ghost Husband wasn’t working. I’d lost my vision: I couldn’t remember why I’d structured the novel the way I had, or why the protagonist was so hostile and cynical.

Over the course of a week-long writing binge, I rewrote my novel. Each new word, each deleted paragraph, was a step toward rightness.

I sent the changes to my agent. “Better. We can market this as a literary romance. Or maybe even mystery. Do you consider yourself a mystery writer?”

She mailed the draft off to publishers with a cover letter and synopsis. Once the novel was out in the world, teaching got easier. My emotions for Brett shifted from intense and humiliating to only vaguely painful, and now all those things he said seemed inconsequential. The way you can look back on a critical performance review at a job and accept your flaws, once several months have passed.

As for the truth serum: I searched on Amazon, and it was no longer available. It sat in my drawer, like a loaded gun. I thought of it every single day, but I vowed not to use it on another person. One could only take so much of the truth.

✶

A month later, my agent called to tell me that all the publishers had passed on the book. “It’s a tough market,” she said.

“What now?” I asked. “Contests?”

“Kat, if I had to give you any advice, I’d say, don’t take it personally and start another book.”

I opened a bottle of wine and flicked on the television. I wanted to get wasted. Somewhere, deep inside, I’d known this was going to happen. I knew the book was a flop. Even back when Brett was telling me how great it was.

I drank a few more glasses of wine and then a few more. And then a few more. I scrolled social media and inevitably looked at Brett’s profiles. He hadn’t posted in two weeks. I checked his friend list and Stella was no longer on it.

His number was still saved in my phone, now under the name “Dickface 666.” 

He answered right away. “I got an offer on Ghost Husband,” I blurted out. I hadn’t known I was going to lie. It was like I’d taken a lying serum.

“That’s fantastic news,” he said. “How are you, otherwise?”

“Amazing. How about you?”

“Working long hours. Making lots of money. Stella and I broke up.”

I almost guffawed with gratitude. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was lust.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I should never have broken up with you the way I did. I just thought we’d be happier apart and I went about it the wrong way.”

“I guess we are both happier,” I said. “Aren’t we?” I was slurring a little. 

“You are,” he said. “You’ve got your book.”

We exchanged pleasantries and then goodbyes. After disconnecting, I smiled so hard that it hurt.

Stella was out of the picture. I’d told a white lie, and it didn’t hurt anybody. Brett admitted he was wrong.

But something nagged me: Brett said he had only been with Stella because of lust, but that contradicted all the stuff he revealed at Maison Richard. Sure, lust came into play, but there was a lot he liked about her other than sex. Mostly that she was like a kid who looked up to him, that she was some kind of virgin saint, but still.

I got the serum out of the drawer and brought it to the bathroom sink, prepared to pour it down the drain.

“Carpe noctem,” I said aloud. “I am done with you.”

As I had impulsively lied to Brett, I impulsively drank the serum. All of it. Not just a drop. I might blame it on the alcohol, but there was some other mania operating, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself.

I stood in my bedroom under the fan. “Tell me the truth,” I commanded myself, like a witch. I felt like a witch, powerful and strange, on the verge of self-discovery or destruction.

I called Brett again. “Kat?” he said.

“Are you really sorry?” I asked. “I can’t give you the serum, so I just need you to be honest. Just be straight with me, for once in your life.”

“What serum? Did you drug me last time we were together? Because I really did feel—”

I interrupted him. “Are you sorry or not?”

“I am sorry. Are you sorry for being a pretentious asshole our entire fucking relationship?” He was yelling.

“There!” I said. “There! I knew it! You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” he said. “You’re such an angry person. We can never be civil.”

“I’m not angry. I’m sad.” I closed my eyes. Something shifted—like two puzzle pieces locking together inside my chest. The serum was working. I could almost feel my skin glowing, radiating a gold sheen. “Brett. Listen to me. My book sucks. You didn’t realize that because you aren’t creative and you don’t like art.” Vomit rose inside my throat. “I never wanted to be a writer. I was just good at putting sentences together. I wanted to be pretty. I wanted to be a flight attendant. I wanted to believe in God. I wanted to learn how to dance. I wanted you to like me, not just pretend to, to keep the peace. I wanted to be a good, wholesome, likeable girl like Stella, but I was too ugly and smart.” Once I said the truth aloud, it stopped hurting. 

I dropped the phone and vomited. Euphoric, high. Even puking felt good.

The problem is that I was puking up blood.

“Well, why don’t you do it?” Brett said. “Why don’t you do all those things? You could still become a flight attendant. Maybe if you’d been your true self, maybe we’d still be together, Kat. Maybe you’re at odds with yourself. Your life is all wrong.”

I wiped my mouth. “But that’s the point, Brett. That’s the whole point. I can’t be the girl I wanted to be. The real me is who I am, right now, this person, constantly fighting herself and everybody else in the world. That is me.” I hiccuped. 

“There’s no easy answer, then,” Brett said.

He hadn’t taken the serum, but he was right. “I wish I could lie and tell you I have the capability to change,” I said.

“Maybe lying isn’t so bad.” Brett laughed.

Then, we both laughed. It went on forever. I wasn’t sure we’d ever laughed together, our entire relationship. “Honesty will have to suffice,” I said once we finished. And it did. At least for a little while.

✶✶✶✶

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