Fairy Tale Fail

Chapter 12a - Liars

It was almost like traveling, but the food was free, and I didn't have to ride a plane.
   Everyone at Lucas' friend Mark's party was half a foot taller, years older, and leagues cooler than me. Seriously. Every single person.
   In a way, it explained why he seemed oblivious to the adoration the office people had for him. In this crowd he was almost ordinary. First of all, they were all thirty and older. At twenty-nine, Lucas was already one of the youngest, an idea that I found strange and disorienting at first.
   I didn't know anyone there, except for Sandra, and I realized that I didn't have to pretend to be cool. I entered that bar and got a feeling strangely similar to landing at a new airport – this was a fresh start. Every single person there was a fresh start to me.
   And suddenly that put me at ease.
   As Lucas showed me around and introduced me to one group of strangers after another, I actually felt good about myself. It was easy when they welcomed him so warmly – they really did miss him, I could tell. Normally I would have been shy and insecure, being young and unaccomplished in the face of the lawyer, the doctor, the grad student, the entrepreneur, but I didn't care. They were his friends, not mine, and they would only find out my weaknesses if I told them.
   "So how long have you known Lucas?" was the favorite question of the night. After saying "a few months" several times. We got bored with it.
   "She was my childhood yaya," Lucas said to George, the doctor.
   "I met him at the MRT station yesterday," I told Annie, the grad student.
   "I met her in church," Lucas said to Sheila, the lawyer, perfectly deadpan.
   She was the only one who called him on it. "Liar. You don't go to church!"
   He was great at this, and I bet he didn't even need me. By the second hour I was feeling comfortable enough to stay afloat even as Lucas was taken aside by a bunch of people who wanted to catch up with him. Birthday boy Mark and his wife Lisa immediately headed toward me when Lucas left my side.
   "You're not really his secretary, right?" Lisa said, eyeing me curiously.
   "I'm not," I said, laughing. "But we work together."
   "But really, how long have you known each other?"
   "We've been working together for years, but I only really started hanging out with him recently. But everyone has been asking me that."
   "Well, we're all just concerned for our boy," Mark said, lowering his voice a bit. "We just want to see him happy."
   Somehow it didn't appear to me that Lucas was unhappy. Sure, he had been hurt, but he looked like he had his life under control. Really, people should leave us brokenhearted folk alone and stop trying to fix us. We healed on our own time.
   "And frankly, we're relieved to see him with someone like you," Lisa added.
   "Um, what does that mean?" I wondered what kind of girls then Lucas said he went out with, the ones who didn't last.
   "You said you wouldn't be judgmental," Mark teased his wife.
   "I'm sorry!" she said, rolling her eyes. "But we've known Lucas a while. We know what he's like. He got really burned by Patty and started dating girls who were different. It was like he got so screwed up that he thought maybe he should just date the opposite of Patty. Ugh, I knew those wouldn't last from the first time I met them."
   To put it more diplomatically, Mark and Lisa thought that Lucas' girlfriends after Patty weren't, well, decent.
   "Patty is a great girl. She made a mistake. He probably thought that he should be avoiding her type, from then on, but that was his mistake," Lisa explained.
   I shook my head. "She can't be that great then, if that's what she did to him."
   Lisa sighed. "It doesn't matter what she did to him. Lucas only really gets along with girls who are confident and smart. She has to be someone who can keep up with him, or keep him interested. Being betrayed by that kind of person shouldn't turn him off from all confident and smart people. He tried going out with ditzes and they all didn't last."
   "What she means is that we're glad he brought you and you're not a ditz," Mark said. "It's a sign that Lucas has started to have faith in his instincts again."
   "Oh, you can't possibly know that," I joked. "I've got issues like you wouldn't believe."
   "Okay, okay, let's not put so much pressure on Ellie." Mark shifted gears rather quickly, tossing a quick glance in Lucas' direction. "We're just glad he's here."
   Lisa leaned closer. "This is the first time I've even seen him in more than a year. Where was he last year, Mark? Ilocos Norte?"
   Mark shook his head. "No, Vigan. And over Christmas he was in Cebu. We'd invite him to something and find out that he's taken off somewhere. But I'm glad to see him like this. He looks, well, normal."
   Aw, he used travel as an escape too. We looked over at Lucas, who was standing on the other side of the room with Sandra. He saw me and raised his beer, and I toasted him with my drink (and a huge smile) from across the room.
   "He'll be fine," I said to Mark and Lisa.

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My husband and I (when we were dating) actually did this at a party when his college friends first met me. I forgot the lies we told them about how we met by now though. (I wonder if they still believe whatever we told them!)