Blog Love Omega Glee: Lovers Like To Lie (5 September 2012)

In the twilight on the patio of Purgatory, Francine sits chain-smoking, noting a slight chill in the air as the days grow shorter, still suffused with the sweat of summer, but knowing that autumn draws near in the north, so each lightened evening gets shorter and sadder, but Francine doesn't mind, letting the darkness suit her and suiting the darkness to let her, and Lilith comes out to light the patio's lone tiki-torch and defense against mosquitoes and the other small creatures that delight in the border of day and night, and Jake keeps calling on Francine's cell, but she won't answer because she's too busy thinking, though she'd like to answer, but she doesn't want to fall into an old pattern again, and she thinks back to that old pattern, and remembers how she got here, with the world seemingly falling apart, and her own small little piece of it falling even faster, and she remembers being on-track, a college graduate, her parents proud--maybe that was the mistake, as we all know what pride comes before--and making her way in the world, climbing up and up that corporate ladder, a go-getter, a get-goer, until she met John, and yeah, yeah, she was a feminist and knew all that Prince Charming fairy tale stuff was garbage and propaganda for a patriarchal society, but it got in her and she wanted to believe and it was happening to her and it was like a fairy tale but the fairy dust wore off and soon she had a bad feeling in her gut, a stomachache, but it wasn't from anything she ate, it was from John because he wasn't as nice to her as he used to be, and though they were living together and engaged to be married, she felt like some possession he had collected and having gotten it, filed it away and forgot about it, and went out to get something else, the collector, the hunter, always on the lookout, though he told her he was working late, or he had to do this or had to do that, all entirely possible and plausible until one day Francine took his stories or story and interpreted them differently, constructing an alternate story, and in her alternate story everything made sense, every strange phone call, every strange absence, and every strange action of this stranger who shared her bed, and the way it all made sense was that John who had sworn his love was true, true blue, was really not so true, was really, boo-hoo, a liar, who lied with her every night--except for one or two when he claimed to have went out with the guys after work, drank too much, and passed out at the apartment party after they left the bars, calling her, penitent, apologizing, complaining of stress at work, and how he had to do this to get ahead at the firm, had to be buddy-buddy, though he'd much rather have been with her, and he was sorry, so sorry, and she felt like a fool, but not wanting to upset the stack of apples she called her life, she forgave him and understood, though she didn't understand--and who apparently lied to her every day, and when someone lies it's hard to ever believe anything he says again, and she set out to confirm the lies, though she felt dirty about it, so she looked on the computer and saw what he did and she listened through the walls when he had a conversation in another room and closed the door so she couldn't hear, and she could have even imagined following him around like a private detective in some B movie, but one day she decided to check his phone while he was in the shower and the text messages she found--some still burned on her brain such as "I want you", "See you tonight xoxoxoxo", "You so rock", "U r so hot", "Miss u", "Im horny", "I hope u like ur piercing In return I want a kiss", "did you make it home ok", "Leave wifey at home and come out Ill give u a treat", "I wish you were here", "I wish you were here too", "I can't stop thinking about you", "I miss you so much it hurts", and worse ones she's repressed--beyond being offended by the terrible punctuation and spelling, Francine was crushed by knowing that she had given her love to someone who could so casually throw it away and pursue an office tramp, who perhaps had money, who perhaps had bigger tits, or maybe John was so self-absorbed and insecure that he needy needed someone telling him how great he was every second of the day and he didn't much care who that person was, but whatever it was, John should have ended things with Francine and then messed around with the tramp, but John was a liar, a lousy lover, and Francine confronted him in the bathroom, and thus started the chain of events that led her to here chainsmoking a few years later with Lilith approaching her table and saying, "Jake's not John, Francine. You have to learn to trust again. Don't ruin a good thing because of a bad thing in the past."

"What?' Francine says, coming out of her skull back into the patio.

"I said, 'Do you want me to empty your ashtray, or are you making a sculpture that won't last?'" Lilith says.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.