Lie to Me by Chloe Cox

first time she told me to lie to her, she’d sent me a text at like five in the morning, telling me she couldn’t come by to train that morning. I’ll be honest, I was paranoid. It was after her father had been by the gym to check me out, and I thought I’d handled that, you know? And hell, I was already on my way over to her house to pick her up like we’d agreed after that, just to walk her over to the gym, make sure she got there safe.
    It didn’t even occur to me not to go to her house. Not until I was there, seeing the windows all lit up, way too early in the morning for that. I knocked on the door, and only after that did I think that wait, maybe something was really wrong. The idea that something might be really wrong with Lo?
    That made me knock harder.
    So that was when I met Mrs. Chase.
    She looked like Harlow, or would have if she’d slept more in the last few days and didn’t have a little boy in her arms. Actually, she looked like hell.
    Turns out Mr. Chase was on a business trip, some kind of advertising thing, and first the little guy, Dill, and then Harlow had gotten some kind of bug. Mrs. Chase looked like she was about to lose her mind.
    “What, Marcus?” she said. “What?”
    I had to try not to laugh, because it sounded like she was just pleading with the universe, just begging it not to throw anything else at her.
    “Need any help?” I asked.
    Mrs. Chase blinked a few times. Then she said, “Yes,” and pulled me inside.
    So I fixed their garbage disposal. Ran the trash out. Did whatever. All that took like twenty minutes while Mrs. Chase was taking care of Dill, and when I was done she looked at me like I was an angel.
    Come on. You know I liked that. The parents thinking I’m Superman? Not too bad.
    I should probably say, at this point, that I had not yet admitted to myself that I had feelings for Harlow. I mean, yeah, I had sexual feelings for her. That was a given, with that body and that face. But in my eyes she was still too young, at least in experience—I’d already figured out she was smarter than me, but smart doesn’t get you everything. So it was more like I cared about her, but I was looking out for her. Like she was in the minors, looking to move up to the majors.
    That’s kind of a lie, though. I don’t know what I was waiting on, exactly, maybe just reassurance that I wouldn’t screw it up and hurt her. Because the truth was, I got a lot of pussy, but not a whole lot of relationships. Or maybe I was just afraid. Or maybe my instincts were just that good. No matter what the real reasons behind my decision to hold off, I still saw her as mine, regardless. Not that I told her that.
    So maybe I was always kind of a bastard.
    Anyway, twenty minutes of doing chores for Mrs. Chase and I was walking upstairs to check in on Harlow. I would have been there anyway if she’d told me she was sick. I smiled, thinking maybe she knew that. She had to know I was going to come check up on her if she sent me a text like that with no explanation.
    You know what I remember most about the Chase home before the accident? All the pictures. They had all these family pictures all over the walls, and on the wall of the staircase, so they were at eye level all the way up. Happy family type pictures, all smiling and teasing each other. Walking up that staircase was like taking a tour of the kind of life I’d heard about but never saw for myself.
    Harlow’s room was near the stairs, and I thought how Mrs. Chase would be able to hear me if she came back out. I cleared my throat and said, “Lo, you up?”
    That was a thin door. I heard her make a sound, like a kind of squeak. Never heard her do that before, so I laughed and said, “I’m coming in.”
    I opened the door and her room was still mostly dark, just a lamp on by the side of her bed. And her bed was just a lumpy mess. My girl was hiding under the damn covers.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, still smiling, walking over to her