The Jaws of Life

26

Alia texts me the next morning asking to come over in between her appointments. I tell her to swing by whenever she wants, which resulted in her getting to my house ten minutes later. We went into the backyard and lounged in the shade, drinking some lemonade and talking about life.

"Oh! It turns out I was right." Alia says to me suddenly. 

I raise an eyebrow at her. "About what? You're right about a lot of things."

"About Jaime." she says. Her voice holds a note of smugness and something else I can't place.

"More specific, please."

"He is seeing someone, he told me." she says to me.

I try to keep my face as expressionless as possible. There's no way she knows about him and me, right? I think Jaime would've told me if he told Alia about us.

"He told you?" I say, wanting to make sure this isn't just her assuming.

"Yeah, it was some cabin fling or whatever." she says.

"Oh." 

So Jaime lied to her is what she's telling me. She doesn't know about him and I after all. This is both a bad and good thing. We told ourselves we'd tell Alia at the end of the month at the latest, but now Jaime has gone and lied to her, saying he was with some random girl. Now he's going to admit that he lied and that it was actually me the whole time.

"Yeah, he said it was someone a couple of cabins down. He always went to hers and thats why you never saw anyone." Alia continues on.

"That makes sense." I say. How much of an elaborate lie did Jaime spin?

"Weird he never told you." she says to me, narrowing her eyes. "Or that you never noticed him gone for long periods of time."

"We- we were always off doing things. Sometimes he said he was going into town with Tony and I believed him." I lie. 

"Yeah, that's true." she says. She grabs her bag from beside her and stands up. "Anyways, I better head off. Busy day and all."

I stand too so I can walk her out. "I get it. Text me if you're free this weekend, maybe we can do something."

She smiles at me. "Maybe. I'll let you know." she says then turns and starts to leave. "Oh, by the way." she says as she swings back around to face me. She reaches into her purse and grabs something then tosses it at me. "You left these at my brothers place. Thought you might want them back."

The sunglasses that I had lost two weeks ago fall into my hands. I thought I'd left them up at the cabin, but as I look at them in my hands I distinctly remember leaving them on Jaime's couch when I sent over to his place.

"Next time you hook up with my brother behind my back, try to hide it a little better." she says with a sneer. She turns and leaves, slamming the door behind her. 

I fucked up.