liar liar ➳ lashton

one

ashton's pov

[edited]

when people think of a liar, they usually think of someone that they can't trust, someone you wouldn't want in your life, or someone who is simply out to hurt you. but when luke hemmings came in my life, i never thought of him as a liar. i thought of him as the boy that did well in school, had all the looks with his blonde hair and blue eyes, and somebody who genuinely cared about the people around him, whether it was someone he knew or not.

around second grade, luke and his family moved in the house straight across from mine, and my parents had invited them over for dinner. little did i know, that was the day i had became best friends with luke.

luke would always make time for me and i think that's what i adored most about him, his care-free personality. after school, luke would come over and we would do the mischievous things kids did. i remember there was one time we decided to prank my very old next door neighbor by using up all of the toilet paper in my house and toilet papered his home. while in the process he noticed something was flying at his windows and came outside to see what was going on. upon seeing us, he took out his flip phone and called the cops, which led us to run to luke's house and hide. that didn't last long before we were caught and our parents weren't so happy about it.

luke stopped coming over to my house after school when we were about fourteen. he always had an excuse as to why he was busy and there was never a day he wasn't doing something more important than me. i'm not sure why he didn't want to come over anymore. i knew it was his choice to ignore me when he had used the same excuse twice, saying he had to go to his only brother's graduation. over time, his excuses got sloppier and i could tell he was done trying to fool me.

we would still talk during school but the conversations were getting shorter and shorter and luke could never stay long because his girlfriend needed him. at the time, i wasn't sure if this was his way of telling me he didn't want me in his life anymore or he needed someone to help him even though he would never admit it.

in grade nine, luke and i made friends with calum and michael and at that point they were the closet thing i got to a true friendship. sure, luke and i were still friends and had unforgettable memories together, but at least with calum and michael they talked to me whenever they could and hung out on the weekends.

tired of being ignored by luke, i decided to do some research on it. after looking on the web for quite some time, i found out that luke is a compulsive liar. everything matched up, the constant excuses, all the denying of his problems, all the obvious lies and not so obvious lies, he was a compulsive liar, no doubt about it.

in other words, he was someone who had a low chance of being helped.

i tried not to let it discourage me, because i knew deep down that luke needed me to help him, whether he knew it or not.

to protect mine and luke's friends, i told mike and cal and the day i told them was the day they looked at luke a different way. they weren't looking at the caring and lovable luke they thought he was, they were looking at the lying and deceiving luke hidden by the thick lies he told. that didn't change their friendship though— if you could even call it a friendship, it only changed the way they heard luke's excuses.

i know luke doesn't mean harm whenever he tells a lie, but it sure seems like it's the only thing he's causing.

trying to talk to a liar about his lies only seems to produce more lies— and not just to me. to luke, his way of revenge is going around my friends and telling them made up stuff to try and get them to de-friend me. good thing michael and calum know better than to let his lies soak up in their minds.