Necessary Lying

I grunted when my alarm went off. The sound that should have made my whole day now brought frustrated tears to my eyes. That alarm meant that Leah should be getting ready to go into her virtual world, but I had no idea if she was even going to show up. I pushed myself up off the bathroom floor, groaning when my body immediately complained. I stumbled into my bedroom to put a pot of coffee on while I waited to see if Leah was going to show up or not. When the coffee was done, I poured myself a mug before carefully carrying it out to my desk where I pulled up the surveillance cameras to see what she was doing. I quickly moved through her house, getting more worried when I didn’t see her in any of the rooms. I pulled up the last camera that showed the front door. I frowned when I saw that Sugar was lying on the floor in front of the door, telling me that Leah was not home.

I began to quickly move through the other cameras in the community to find her. I relaxed a little when I saw her pacing out front of my building. I let out a deep sigh, wanting nothing more than to go down and wrap her up in my arms. I wanted to hold her tight and never let her go, but I couldn’t. I leaned back in my chair, sipping on my coffee while I watched Leah continue to pace and twist her hands together. She suddenly stopped to look directly at the camera, making me feel the urge to hide even though I knew she couldn’t see me.

She lowered her head for a moment before walking up the stairs to enter my building. I sent the elevator down to get her, holding my breath as I waited to see if she would actually come up or not. When the elevator dinged on my floor, I quickly exited out of all of the open programs before picking up one of the pieces of paper on my desk to pretend to read. After stepping off the elevator, she came over to stand in front of my desk, still twisting her hands.

“R. H. M.?”

“Mister will be right with you. Please sit.”

She sighed but went to sit down. I put the paper down before typing on the computer, queuing up instructions for Leah to proceed into Mister’s office for her VR session. While I waited for the order to come over my speaker, I kept my head down. I didn’t want to draw her attention to my face. It held too many emotions for comfort at the moment, and it wouldn’t take a genius to know that I barely slept after crying.

“R. H. M?”

“Yes, Phoenix?” I responded.

“I’m sorry for hitting you.”

“Don’t worry about it, I understand.”

“I–”

“R. H. M., please escort Phoenix into my office and prepare her for her session.”

I stood up before beginning to walk to the office. Leah stepped in front of me and I took a step back, away from her.

“Mister is ready to see you, Phoenix. We shouldn’t keep him waiting,” I told her.

“Can we talk?” She asked softly.

“You’re here for a V. R. session, Phoenix.”

“No, I’m not,” she insisted.

“Then why are you here?” I inquired. “It’s the only thing on the schedule.”

“I- I wanted to talk to you,” she whispered.

“About what?” I countered, already knowing what she wanted to talk about.

I knew and I had already decided on how I was going to handle it. I took a mental step back, hoping that it would deaden my eyes enough to make her believe the words I was about to say, even though I didn’t believe them myself.

“I wanted to apologize to you for everything that happened last night. I should have stayed and spoken to you. I was just so upset and needed to think. And then you showed up and I was wrong for how I reacted to you,” she told me slowly.

“It’s fine. I understand. Please, proceed to Mister’s office.”

She reached out to touch me, making me take another step back. “R. H. M., please. I am sorry for how I acted toward you. I lied to you because I was angry. I do want to be with you. I missed you so much last night. I hadn’t realized how much I would, and–”

I shook my head. “It’s fine, Phoenix. I’m sorry that it ended the way it did, but it doesn’t change the fact that it did.”

Her face fell. “What are you saying, R. H. M.? Don’t you want to be with me too?”

“It’s against the rules, Phoenix. I risked everything to break them for you. I tried and it failed. I won’t do it again,” I said, hating every word that came out of my mouth.

“I said I was sorry. Doesn’t that mean anything?” She inquired, making me hate myself even more with the pain I saw in her eyes.

“It does. It means you’re growing, healing. It means that you are feeling, analyzing, and creating solutions to your emotions. That’s progress, Phoenix. That’s what we are trying to do here. Help our members heal.”

She eyed me with tears glistening in her eyes. “Is that all I am to you now? A member of Eden?”

I walked past her to open the office door for her. “That’s all you should be. Are you coming?”

She stared at me with tears streaming down her face. I held her gaze, refusing to look away. My grip on the doorknob made my knuckles go white, making me grateful that she couldn’t see behind the door. It would give away every emotion. Her hands fisted at her sides, and I slowly raised my eyes from they flew down when she moved.

“If I don’t do the session are you going to kick me out?” She whispered.

“No. You are allowed to miss three sessions before you are given any sort of consequence or warnings,” I informed her.

“Then I don’t want to do it.”

“Okay, then you may go,” I said, barely holding my emotions in check.

“No,” she snapped as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Not until you talk to me.”

I narrowed my eyes on her. “You already said what you wanted to say. What else do you want to talk about?”

“That drive,” she murmured.

I walked over to my desk to grab the trash can, tilting it down so that she could see the broken pieces of said drive in it.

“You broke it?” She asked, shocked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a part of my past, Phoenix. I thought I had found my future with you, but I didn’t,” I told her, regretting every word as her face crumpled more with each syllable.

“But- I thought we had something special. Don’t you want to explore that?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t want a woman who doesn’t trust me. I don’t want a woman who doesn’t understand her worth. I don’t want a woman who thinks the consequence for making mistakes is to hurt herself. I don’t want to be the reason that my partner thinks she deserves to be punished.”

“So, you don’t want to be with me?”

*‘NO!’ I yelled silently. ‘I want to be with you more than anything.’*

I shrugged. “Who knows what will happen in the future. As of right now, there is no us. There won’t be an us until we have both healed. And even when we have, there still might not be an us,” I finished softer than I intended to.

She studied my face for a moment as tears coursed down her face before she nodded, straightening her back. She wiped at her face hard, leaving a red mark on her left cheek that made me long to caress until it was gone. She walked to the elevator and pressed the down button while I held my breath. If I said anything, I was going to throw myself on the floor and beg her to stay. And that was something I couldn’t do. She needed to heal. Maybe even more than I did. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by me, and that was all I proved I was good for. When the doors opened, she turned around to look at me.

“You may not want to be with a broken woman, but I don’t want to be with a man who doesn’t want me. I won’t bring it up again. I’m sorry.”

She stepped into the elevator, bowing her head to hide the tears that I knew were still in her eyes. When the elevator car started moving, I sat down in my chair at my desk, placing my forehead flat on the desktop.

“Fuck! I do want you, baby. And that’s why I can’t have you right now,” I mumbled. “Soon, though. Soon, baby. We’re going to be together and it’s going to be so good.”