Page 202 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
“Maybe everyone lies, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
“If it’s the truth, yes. And you know what happens after the first lie? Every truth becomes questionable. How am I supposed to believe anything you say now?”
He didn’t answer.
I answered for him, “A liar once told me, life is a Sisyphean task. You put out one fire, and another one starts. It’s easier to accept it burns. We live in a world consumed by fire, but at least it’s the truth. You’re not lured to sleep with a false blanket of security, telling yourself you exist in a part untouched by the flames. There’s death, and betrayal, and revenge, and guilt everywhere you turn. It’s healthier to live it, breathe it, and participate in it than to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
I edged closer to him, cupping his face and hating myself for it. “Do you remember what you said when I asked what happens after you’re burnt everywhere?”
He dropped his eyes, and it was so unlike Nas
h, it startled me for a moment.
Even the language of your body is a lie.
My palm whipped away from his skin, and I gave him the biggest truth he’d ever told me, “Don’t succumb to the fire. Be the bigger flame.”
fi-ni-‘fU-gal
(adjective) hating endings; of someone who tries to avoid or prolong the final moments of a story, relationship, or some other journey
Finifugal originates from the Latin word fuga, for flight. It shows us that endings are fleeting. We may hate them. We may fear them. We may avoid them. But we don’t need to.
Like sunsets, endings can be beautiful. The next morning, the sun always rises again, because there is no such thing as an ending, just a new beginning.
“Why is it that two people never realize how much they love each other until one of them says goodbye?”
Silence.
No one answered me. Not even crickets. Made sense, considering I laid on my shitty quilt in the unfamiliar twenty-fourth-floor closet, picturing the ceiling as the starless night. Outside, so many stars twinkled, it nauseated me.
“I had a nightmare last night. In it, I never met Nash. I died in a parasailing accident, and a blue man in a pink suit took me to a white room and showed me Nash Prescott—defending me against Able, feeding me all my life, sending me notes, being the Ben to my Durga, giving me his new first kiss, all the filthy things juxtaposed beside the clean, the baltering, the late nights as ‘roommates’, making love in the rain, the way he loves the same people I love and sees me better than anyone else.”
Ceiling: Stop talking to me, woman.
“I watched it all, thinking it was the most epic love story I’d ever seen. Then, Blue Man shut it off, and I nearly killed him for it. He gave me two options for the afterlife. Door One saves me the heartbreak, but I live a life without ever meeting Nash. Door Two takes me back to day one, where I meet Nash Prescott, eventually fall in love, and experience a pain like I’ve never experienced. Do you want to know which I chose?”
Ceiling: I’m fluent in silence. Please, learn the language, too.
“I chose Door Two. Blue Man patted my shoulder and told me I made the right choice. Apparently, Door One is the bad place and Door Two is the good place. Am I being ridiculous, Ceiling?”
Ceiling: Considering you're talking to an inanimate object and imagining its replies, we’ve sailed past ridiculous and entered involuntary psychiatric hold territory.
“It’s just… everyone in my life lies to me, and I promised I'd never put myself in this situation again. Not if I can help it. Dad—I mean Gideon—lied to me most of my life.”
Ceiling: You mean the man who raised you as his own?
I ignored the buzzkill above me. “Virginia lied to me all my life. Same for Balthazar, but who the hell cares about him?”
Ceiling: Wow. The mom you hate and a guy you considered to be nothing more than a creep until last night lied to you. You seem so torn up about it. Here’s a tissue.
“Fuck you, Ceiling. Such a damn buzzkill.” I made snow angels in the blanket, imagining the comforters in Nash’s penthouse. The quilt ripped when my fingers caught in a hole. “Hank lied to me about his illness. So did Betty and Nash.”
Ceiling: It's almost as if they care enough about you to save you from the pain of watching him die.
“It would be painful, yes, but what’s worse is not being given the option to love him like every moment could be his last. There’s so much I would have done differently.”
Ceiling: If this moment was Nash's or your last moment, would you be here, annoying the hell out of me?
