The Lie by Chad Kultgen

parties like this? Or are you the asshole who just insulted my best friend because he didn’t know any better?”
    Collin was like, “I’m sorry, Brett, I didn’t know you guys were friends. I thought he was just some random guy.”
    Brett was like, “Well now that you know Kyle’s my friend, I think you owe him an apology.”
    Collin was like, “Sorry, man.”
    Kyle was like, “Don’t worry about it.”
    I liked that Kyle wasn’t all agro and everything. It was a cool quality that he had. But I wished he would have been a little more like Brett and told Collin to fuck off or something.
    So after all that, Annie actually ended up going back to Collin’s place with him that night and letting him fuck her in the ass. But supposedly he couldn’t stay hard long enough to finish. And supposedly he blamed it on how drunk he was, but I think it probably had something to with how Brett made him look like a retard.
    Anyway, other than that minor thing, the rest of the party was really fun and I didn’t end up as drunk as I thought I was going to be. After we left the party, Kyle slept with me in my room because his roommate was in his room and we saw Annie leave with Collin so I knew she wouldn’t be back until the morning.
    The next morning I woke up before Kyle and just kind of looked at him while he was sleeping. I really did love him. I snuggled up to him and just went back to sleep until he woke up at like noon or something and wanted to go get breakfast, which we did.
    At breakfast I actually initiated the conversation with Kyle about us being exclusive. I know I had gotten into a relationship with him because I thought it might get me closer to Brett, which it did, but I was okay with us not seeing other people. I didn’t want to have to deal with guys like Collin Davis anymore. Kyle was a good boyfriend and I guess I recognized that. He was about as happy as I’ve ever seen a guy. He leaned across the table over our eggs and pancakes and kissed me and told me he loved me.
    I guess that conversation had both of us thinking about other things because we left breakfast and went back to my room and had sex again without a condom and it wasn’t until the next morning that I remembered we had sex at Brett’s party and I forgot to get the morning-after pill the next day, which is really out of character for me. I didn’t tell Kyle because I didn’t want him to worry and most likely I wasn’t pregnant anyway—I mean, I had my period like the week before.

chapter twelve
     
    The morning after the homecoming party I was coerced into throwing by my supposed best friend, Kyle, the voices of my father and stepmother were audible enough to wake me up. My room overlooked one of our back patio areas, so I got out of bed and went to my balcony. They were having breakfast together, which was abnormal.
    As I turned to go back into my room, thinking about joining them for breakfast, having some strange need to participate in this rare family moment, I raised my right hand close enough to my face to smell the asshole of the naked girl who was still passed out in my bed. Normally I would have made her get up, perform one last act of sexual humiliation, and then I would have introduced her to my stepmother as the “girl I filled with semen last night.” But, again, I felt some strange need to be a part of this genuine family moment. So I recognized that this nameless whore was in such a deep state of unconsciousness that I could easily creep out of my room undetected and avoid dealing with her altogether, which is exactly what I did. I assumed she would wake up at some point in the next few hours, realize that my absence was her cue to exit as quickly as possible, gather her belongings, and leave.
    When I got downstairs and out onto the patio I was almost happy about sitting down to breakfast with my father and stepmother. They rarely did anything together when they were both in Dallas simultaneously. Most often my father