TAKE IT EASY • TC ✔️

13: For the Avoidance of Doubt (and of the Truth)

Lu didn't know why she did it.

Maybe it was the fact that they'd spent the last hour talking about movies and fame and fans. The fact that they'd had a conversation which Lu could only relate to parts of. Sentences like, "And then there are all these people around you, and they're all, well, they're nice and they're amazing and they're screaming, and it's just so, so overwhelming, you know?"

Maybe it was the fact that she'd nodded along, responded with, "Yeah, of course," even though she didn't know what it was like to be loved by so many people. Had never known.

And maybe it was the fact that now she knew about about Timothée, about the person he really was, she felt stupid. Because how couldn't she have known? How couldn't she have picked up on it? Lu didn't have the best memory, for sure, but that taxi ride with Timothée was ingrained into her memory like a hot wire to wood. Etched in, burnt in. The awkward silences, his insistence on taking the taxi. She had thought he was just being considerate for her poor feet in those stupid heeled boots, not realising that the car ride was for his own safety, his own protection. The sunglasses made sense, now.

And all those indicators. All those signals of wealth and affluence. She'd been wary of him ruining his sneakers last night when they'd capered along the sidewalk - they looked fairly new, fairly expensive. She'd originally thought that his willingness to ruin them was just a spur of the moment thing, something he'd wake up and regret in the morning. She hadn't once considered that he might have rows and rows of sneakers in his apartment, lines of shoes just waiting to be ruined by the rain.

It hadn't crossed her mind as she ran those scuffed up shoes under the cold water, nor as she laid them out on the draining board to dry along with her own, that they cost more than three pairs of her sneakers put together. His were nice shoes, she'd noticed that, at least. And more fool her for feeling bad.

Bad because they were lovely, they were lovely shoes. They must have cost a fortune, she'd thought naively, scrubbing at a particularly stubborn fleck of dirt. Lu would have hated to be the one who made him ruin them.

But maybe, after all of that, it was because she'd been met with a sense of dread. A fleeting emotion, one she wasn't entirely used to, but had been suppressing incrementally over the past year.

Because maybe all this talk made her feel small. Just deepened the fear that was already present, already lingering, the fear that-

Because when Timothée asked her what she did for a living, what she did to get by, she let it slip out and she regretted the words as soon as they'd left her mouth.

"I'm in architecture," she'd said easily, and Timothée had made a little sound of interest. Of approval, which went straight to her heart - finally, someone was interested in what she had to say.

Even if it was a lie.

---

Lu had learnt, from a young age, that she was good at avoiding the truth.

Her brother Marco used to describe this trait as clever, cunning. Her mother used to call it lying - which, in itself, was a lie - because Lu never liked lying. Lying was different to avoiding the truth. Lying was blatant disrespect, obvious deceit, and Lu didn't like that.

She was, however, very good at dodging around the truth. Skirting around the edges, like applying aloe vera gel to sunburn. Soothing, smearing, blurring the line between fact and fiction, between skin that was tanned and skin that was burnt.

She'd avoided the truth for as long as she could remember. Avoided it as a child.

You're getting too big for this!