Extra Ordinary (Riddle Era)

Chapter 17

I'm not a liar.

Well. She was. And she couldn't convince him otherwise with a few stupid words. She couldn't.

I'm not a liar.

What a strange thing to say. What a strange lie to tell.

I'm not a liar.

He had heard every version of someone asking to be trusted. It was the background noise of a childhood spent in the midst of a pitiful group of orphans begging to be believed about all the simplest things. Like belief was akin to salvation. To love. To all those beautiful things every other child got that they were left chasing.

He had heard people deny falsehoods and manipulations and deceits. He had heard people affirm truths and honesties and facts. He had heard every version of the phrase and he'd heard them all said both in honesty and insincerity.

I'm not a liar.

He had never heard it said like that. Like she wasn't denying anything. Wasn't trying to convince him. Wasn't even arguing a point. She said it like it was a simple fact. Like she had nothing to prove. No concern for his response. No care in the world for whether or not anyone believed her. She said it like it meant something more than just those words.

I'm not a liar.

And somehow, the way she'd said it, it had meant you can't lie to me. Like her honesty demanded his. Like her veracity was a shield. Or perhaps a lens. Like her integrity made her somehow untouchable.

I'm not a liar.

It was an arrogance. It was an accusation. It should not have been keeping him up this late for the third night in a row.

But it was. And not just because of the words she had spoken. Not just the boldness of them. Not just the brash confidence that somehow demanded belief. Not just the insanity of it all.

No, what had kept him staring at the ceiling hour after hour, night after night, was that Tom had always known the answer to the question she had implied in every sentence. He had always known that the only response he would ever give to people demanding his truths was lies. The only thing anyone with the audacity to question him would know would be the terror of his displeasure.

It should have been easy to give it to her. The moment she'd started talking about truths and answers and honesties, he should have laughed in her face. He should have chuckled right up to the moment when he could see the uncertainty sinking in and then he should have told her exactly what would happen the next time she suggested he was anything other than perfectly honest with everyone all of the time.

He should have had to fight to keep himself civil. He should have had to hold his tongue because the first words on it should have been defiance and rage and condemnation. And instead, the only coherent thought he had managed to form was to wonder if he had somehow missed some veiled threat in her words. And if he hadn't, then what the hell was she doing?

And yet, no matter how many times he went over it in his head, now matter how he considered her facial expressions and her tone and the words themselves, there was never any hint of a threat in her words. They had felt, instead, like a warning. Like an invitation. Like a question.

And just like always with Steele, Tom didn't have the answers.

So he spent that night sleepless, just as he had spent the night before. And just as he suspected he would spend the night after and the night after and the night after right on up until he came up with a solution. Because aside from her strangeness, aside from the content of her words, there was also the nagging truth that it had rarely, if ever, taken Tom this long to come up with a solution to any problem. Especially one that took the form of another person. But Tom didn't have answers for her. And that rather unfortunate truth had sparked this restlessness that had him staying up late staring at the ceiling even after he finished his work. That had him making excuses to avoid all the pandering and sucking up of his peers because as soothing as it was to his ego, it was also distracting. It was that restlessness that had him wandering late nearly a week after his last conversation with Steele, half hoping inspiration would spring from these useless, snoring portraits. Like any of them had any answers.