I take a seat on the couch but in the opposite corner, so I’m sitting as far away from Matthew as possible. I realize how ridiculous this is. I’m a grown woman, so why am I acting like I’m doing something wrong by having Matthew inside my home?
Get a grip, Gigi.
“You okay?” Matthew asks in a voice laced with concern. “You seem tense.”
I clasp my hands together across my knees.
“I’m totally fine.”
“Did that phone call upset you or something? I heard you raise your voice a couple of times.”
“Not at all,” I lie. “It was just someone from high school who has always annoyed me.”
“High school?”
“Yeah, it’s nothing. My parents sometimes give out my cell number to old friends thinking they’re being helpful.”
“Ahh, understood.”
Matthew stuffs a carrot in his mouth then takes a tour around my living room. It’s small but well furnished. My Aunt Sloan did a great job when it came time to help me decorate and I can tell that he’s impressed. She has great taste and my parents were generous with the budget.
“Your place is real nice, Gigi. I don’t know too many people our age who can afford to live in this neighborhood.”
He picks up one of my water glasses and reads the words etched in the underside of the glass–Tiffany.
“And are these actual Tiffany glasses?”
“Um, yeah, how’d you know?”
I‘ve never given much consideration to the kind of glasses I own. My mom and Aunt Sloan did all the decorating and stocking of my cabinets for me. Shopping is not really my thing, but now I’m starting to feel as if I should have paid attention. I’m clueless about the cost of some of the items in my own home.
“My mom pulls a set of these out for Christmas dinner. She makes a big deal about them because they're so expensive. The hospital must really pay you well.”
I’ve been so careful about keeping my two lives separate, one as a daughter of the King Family and one as a broke college graduate living her life in the city, but it’s moments like this that my mom has always warned me about. The moment when those two lives intersect and a person in one of them starts to ask too many questions for his or her own good; the moment when I have to decide to either tell the truth about who I am or tell a lie to cover up a lie to cover up another lie.
Decisions. Decisions.
Actually, the choice is easy.
I decide on a lie.
Five
Gigi
“The pay at the hospital is actually pretty good.”
While I’ve mentioned to Matthew that I work as a patient actor in the standardized patient program for Temple University’s Medical School, I’ve also tried my best not to talk too much about it. What he doesn’t know is that the gig doesn’t pay me nearly enough to live the way that I do, and if he discovers that truth, there will be even more questions.
“So this acting thing at Temple actually pays you enough money to pay for things like that piece of art on your wall and high end designer stemware?”
“My parents said the glasses were a wedding gift that they never used so they gave them to me as a sort of hand-me-down housewarming gift, and I think my aunt thrifted that painting from Goodwill.”
More lies.
It’s shameful how the words easily roll off of my tongue as if they were truth, but I suppose it’s because the best liars in the world have trained me. I was raised to tell lies or half truths about much of what my parents do to keep me safe. The key to telling a good lie is to keep the story simple, consistent, and close to the truth. Plus, if you tell the same story every single time, you might start to believe it yourself.
“Is this standardized patient thing something you could make a full-time career out of? I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it before.”
