Carrying the Lie

"Didn't mommy say you're not to go into her den? The rest of the house is your playground. The den is where mommy does her work. Okay? Okay. I love you, too, kiddo. Can you give Debbie the phone?"

Jess held her phone aside, offering a sheepish grin and apologetic shake of her head to Maggie seated across from her in their cosy cocktail booth. Her friend didn't react, too self-preoccupied while mentally gnawing at her own immediate concerns.

Jess spoke on her phone again, "Hey, Debbie. Yeah, sorry. Carter just misses our evening snuggle. Mm-hmm. You're going to read him a bedtime story? Sure. Oh, one of mine? Oh, no, no... ha, ha... maybe not. I've used him as a guinea pig too many times, and he's no longer impressed. Ha, ha. Okay, help yourself to any snacks and feel free to watch TV once he's in bed. Hopefully I won't be too late. Thanks!"

As she put away her phone, Jess sighed, "That kid of mine. Last time Carter got into my den unsupervised, he took it upon himself to do a little editing work. The Rock Trolls ended up calling each other 'fart' and 'poop' for ten entire pages. Compelling reading, let me tell you."

Maggie wasn't paying attention. She was busy scanning the bar floor as she sat there stiffer than the two shots of liquor she had already imbibed. Jess could see the glow of cold perspiration all along the surface of her beleaguered friend's pale face and neck.

"Hey, Mags," Jess said, reaching over and patting Maggie's hands as she held them clenched around an empty glass, "you need to relax."

"Do you think he's here already?" Maggie asked, then anxiously checked her phone.

"Will you stop looking at your phone every ten seconds? Your battery must be nearly dead," Jess said, then scanned the crowded lounge. "You told him 8:00. He still has fifteen minutes. Why? Do you think he's hiding in a corner somewhere checking you out?"

Maggie fussed with the black velvet choker displayed prominently around her white neck. A pearl pendant dangled from it. Her pouty lips mumbled, "Maybe."

Jess smiled. "Then, so what? He's probably thinking, 'Wow! She's gorgeous! I need to down a few beers and build up my courage before I can approach this vision of hotness!'"

That sounded pretty stupid, even as she was saying it. Her attempts to loosen Maggie's screws bounced like sponges against a brick wall. Jess rolled her eyes. Her friend was sliding down that muddy hill of doubt faster and faster, and it was starting to make her feel bad.

She was doing a terrible job playing the supportive wingman on this blind date. Maggie should have picked someone else, to be honest. Jess was horribly out of practice. Hell, she had no practice at all. Being in a bar and meeting strangers for dates seemed so foreign to her having skipped that particular rite of passage.

Despite her relatively young age, her nightly routine for the past several years involved putting her toddler son to bed, then locking herself in her bedroom for a rigorous yoga session for an hour or two depending on how well the day's writing went. It was a fairly solitary life, but she had settled into it.

She didn't even know how to dress properly for stuff like this. Maggie had told her that they were going to a casual spot. It turned out the place was more like a nightclub than the pub bar that she had described. While everyone else was decked out in fashionably cool or provocative attire, Jess stuck out like a sore thumb in her jeans, an oversized tan cotton blouse and a white t-shirt. She wore barely any makeup and her rusty-blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail to hide the fact that she hadn't properly brushed it today.

Despite her conspicuousness, she soldiered on for her friend's sake. "Look, it's just a meetup, okay? Just meeting this guy, uh...?"

"Waylon."

"Just meeting... Waylon. Wow," she paused, still unable to get over that name. "You're just meeting Waylon to get to know each other. Put a face to all the blind messages you've sent so far to the guy."

Maggie nodded unconvincingly, still fidgeting with the choker around her neck as if it was actually strangling her.

"He seems like a nice guy, right?" Jess assured her. Truthfully, she had no idea what Waylon was like. Maggie just sprung it on her that she had met a guy on some app and that they were meeting up. Jess never saw the messages.

She knew Maggie had been out of the dating scene for a while and was surprised when she told her that she had jumped back in. Jess encouraged her, however. Maybe, depending on her friend's fortunes, she'd give it a whirl again and start dating someday.

Yeah. 'Someday'. She rolled her eyes.

"A nice guy..." Maggie sighed.

Jess smiled crookedly at her. "Yeah, I mean, you're smart. It's not like you would agree to meet some jerk who you figured was just looking to have a one night stand?"

The pinch of concern in Maggie's brow intensified painfully.

Jess leaned in and said, "I know you, Mags. I'm sure both you and he aren't the types who'd want to... you know."

"Fuck on a first date?" Maggie dropped.

Jess' jaw fell slack as her eyes rounded wider and wider with each blink at her friend's unexpected bluntness. "Gu-uhh... I... was thinking more like 'get intimate'?"

"God, I need to go to the washroom!" Maggie suddenly blurted. She stripped off the choker and tossed it onto the table before standing up and exiting the booth.

"Washroom? Wait. Right now? Mags you can't..." Jess looked bewildered as she haplessly watched her friend plough through the crowded lounge towards the washrooms. She slumped her shoulders, hunched over the table, bleak-faced. Softly groaning through clenched teeth, she rubbed her temples with her palms.

This wasn't going according to plan. She was supposed to be the one getting up at this time and finding an inconspicuous hidey-place in the bar. From that vantage point, she could safely observe --okay, stalk, if you will-- the proceedings at the booth when Waylon arrived. If anything went awry, she could come to make the save. They hadn't even worked out the signal for that, though.

"Shhhii-oot," she muttered, curling her lips to avoid uttering the actual expletive stewing in her head. It was kind of ridiculous how she contorted her mouth and managed to avoid cursing for so long. She actually used to swear quite liberally when she was in high school, enough to send her parish priest running to pray for her. When adulthood hit, though, it was like the vault had been sealed on her vocabulary of vulgarity, and she'd been particularly mindful of swearing for the last several years, being both a children's book author and a mother of a kindergartener.

The quickly souring situation and the bustling, stifling setting of the crowded lounge justified an exasperated response, however.

While she waited for Maggie to return, she nursed her drink with self-conscious sips. After another couple of minutes had passed, she sighed then glanced awkwardly around. A shiver suddenly coursed through her. A feeling like she was being watched crept up the skin of her neck, raising the fine strands of hair there. She blinked and shook her head while smirking to herself. So stupid. Why would anyone notice, let alone be watching, her?

To distract herself, she shifted her attention toward Maggie's choker abandoned on the table. She kind of liked it, though she did wonder if such a thing was fashionably outdated. She picked it up and slipped it around her neck, then checked herself out on her phone camera, running her fingers along the soft velvet. Not bad. A little accoutrement went a long way to improve her bland look. Well, not really.

She then noticed the time on her phone. Maggie had been gone for almost ten minutes. What in the world...?

Jess was about to stand and go after her friend in the washroom, but even before she raised her butt from the seat, she was confronted by the abrupt view of a man's torso.

"Oh!" She flinched and looked up, startled.

Standing by her booth was a brawny, solid figure holding a beer in his hand. He nodded his squared, dimpled jaw at her with a tight-lipped smile stretching the short stubble on his face. "Hey," he said.

"Uh, what?" Jess mumbled, still shaking the fog from her head. Don't be rude, she told herself then blurted, "I mean, hi!"

"Mind if I sit?" he asked, gesturing to the seat across from her.

Her brows pinched as she paused noticeably for a second, then eyed him and asked, "Sorry, are you... Waylon?"

He definitely did not look like a 'Waylon'.

The guy cocked his brow and then his broad, round shoulders shook slightly as if he had chuckled to himself. He nodded, offered his hand and said, "Yeah, I'm Waylon."

Jess realised she was gawking. She quickly took his hand and said, "I'm Maggie's...-"

Raucous laughter suddenly erupted from a crowded, nearby table, interrupting her. The guy looked towards the commotion momentarily.

Jess regarded his large, rough hand still clutching hers, and noticed the tattoos running along his forearm up to the rolled-up cuffs of his black shirt. She tilted her head and squinted, finding the intricate articulation of images and colours instantly intriguing. When he turned back to her she was still scrutinising his arm.

"Maggie, yeah?" he said. He spoke with a low, parched tone that was swallowed up by the amplifying clamour in the bar.

"What?" Jess said.

He leaned down and repeated, "Good to meet you face-to-face, Maggie."

Jess tilted her head as she was suddenly playing catch up.. Waving her free hand, she replied, "Oh, no. Maggie is... "

"Hold on." Waylon raised a finger, abruptly cutting her off. He straightened up, frowning, and reached into his back pocket for his phone to answer a call.

He finally released Jess' hand as he turned away, covering his other ear to talk.

Jess continued to look up at him from her seat. Though she sucked her pink lips into her mouth and held them there, she couldn't hide her admiration of how well his broad shoulders filled out his shirt. Foremost on her mind, though, was wondering just how much body art covered his physique, what with all the ink flowing from behind his collar, up the back of his thick neck, to the smooth line of his close-cropped black hair.

Noticing that she was still biting her lip and fixating on the guy, she needed to shake her head to pull her eyes away. She grabbed her phone and quickly texted Maggie: "WTH are you?"

The guy turned around pocketing his phone. He slid down into the seat like a cool block of jagged ice. Hands clasped on the table, he smiled and said, "Sorry to keep you waiting... Maggie."

Jess chuckled anxiously, checked her wrist for a watch that wasn't there and said, "Actually, I think you're right on time... Waylon. A man who's prompt. Imagine that!"

He looked at her curiously with a crooked grin. "Uh... I meant my talking on the phone just now."

"Ah."

Over the growing din of chatter and laughter in the bar, Waylon remarked, "Packed place."

Jess did notice how considerably more crowded it had become since she and Maggie arrived. She touched the choker on her neck. Maggie had worn it to identify herself if the place got busy. "I guess this was a good idea?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yeah. It's nice. Suits you."

"Wouldn't want you to end up meeting the wrong online blind date," she laughed.

Oh, sweet irony...

"Wouldn't want that." Waylon shrugged and shifted in his seat. "I'm feeling a bit underdressed myself. This type of place isn't my typical hang out, you know?"

"Not at all. You look good," Jess said with a rolling nod of her head. She repeated the sentence to herself. Though he was more casually dressed than most of the men in the bar, the grey jeans and the black button-down shirt with rolled sleeves wasn't an unappealing look for him. Not. At. All.

It was a helluva lot better than what she was wearing, anyway.

"So-o... Waylon," she began, figuring she'd kill some time till Maggie got back. It would be easier to explain the name confusion at that point.

"Waylon," she repeated and paused, at a sudden loss for words, not to mention caught up in the steady gaze of his dark eyes which were confidently secured upon her blushing face. She gave her head a slight shake then tried once more, "'Waylon'... that's such a unique name these days."

"Not my real name," he said.

Jess frowned. "It's not?"

He shrugged. "People usually use their real names online when they're matching up?"

She was taken aback a little. She thought people would at least know their real first names, but maybe it was safer to use fake names for online dating sites. She played it cool and managed a cheeky snicker.

"I mean, is your name actually Maggie?" he asked.

Jess paused, then said, "No." She forced a scoffing giggle and rolled her eyes. "Pfft! Of course, that's not my real name."

At least she wasn't lying... sort of.

She asked with a playful wink, "So if your name isn't Waylon, what is it?"

His eyes narrowed. A coy grin shifted the noticeable stubble around his mouth. "Maybe... " he said with a deliberate pause, "maybe we stick with our online names for now?"

Jess turned her head aside and peered at him from the corners of her eyes. She also sported a curious grin. "Why?"

"I don't know," he said as he leaned a bit more forward over the table, "little lies make things more interesting."

Now it was Jess' turn to narrow her eyes on him. She wagged her finger and declared, "Momma Rock Troll says, 'A muskrat who tells everyone he's a bird often finds himself face down in the dirt'."

Waylon leaned back in his seat, smirking. "What?"

Instantly, Jess regretted her remark. She cringed apologetically and looked away, rubbing the back of her neck. "Sorry. I just read that in a book somewhere... "

Actually, it was from one of the books from the series of Rock Troll children's books she had written. Momma Rock Troll was quite fond of such sayings. Sometimes it was difficult to turn off her writer's brain.

Still smirking, Waylon nodded.

Jess sighed again to herself as she looked into his dark eyes. It was difficult to ignore the fact that she was increasingly hoping Maggie wouldn't come back from whatever black hole had sucked her up anytime soon. Honestly, the speed at which her concern for her absent friend was waning was shocking.

"Sorry for saying this," Jess said, "but you don't really strike me as the sort of guy who uses a dating app."

"Yeah?" he remarked. "What sort of guy do I strike you as?"

A guy who goes to bars to pick up women not to get to know them. That's what crossed her mind immediately as she chewed her lip while pondering a reply. "A guy who doesn't need to use a dating app," she repeated, instead.

"And yet, here I am with you," he replied.

"Ah, there!" she chuckled and pointed at him. "Eat apples with your eyes closed and a worm might bite your nose."

Jeez. More Momma Rock Troll quotes? Jess couldn't believe how she couldn't control herself.

"Sorry!" she exclaimed, burying her face in her hands. "What is wrong with me tonight?"

Waylon chuckled and shook his head. "I really need to read that book," he said.

Jess laughed through a heavy sigh.

Despite more flustered words on her part, they continued to chat, mostly innocuous conversation. It seemed like Waylon was intent on keeping anything of substance close to his chest. It was enough for Jess to maintain a wary eye on him, even as she became more curious about him.

There was definitely something about this guy -- his magnetic gaze, his confident demeanour and gruff, dry tone. He had a coarse, masculine growl filtering his voice like he was speaking with a piece of sandpaper in his throat.

The guy was just one raw piece of hardwood lumber. Along with the plentiful tattoos, she found his face fascinating as well. It was perfectly imperfect with a faint but long scar across his right upper cheek and a nose that looked like it had been dinged once or twice. He probably had put that solid body of his to good, rough and tumble use a few times.

She imagined there was probably a lineup of women who could vouch for how well he used his body.

Jess' eyes suddenly widened as she stiffened in her seat. "Stop it," she scolded herself.

Waylon shrugged. "Stop what?"

"N-nothing," she replied. "I... uh... I mean I wish it wasn't so loud in here."

"Yeah," he said, nodding and frowning, "and the music is shit."

"Yeah... it's definitely..." Jess paused, then sighed, "poop."

"Woah. Watch the language there," Waylon chuckled.

Jess laughed half-heartedly then took a hard gulp from her glass, trying to erase her preceding thoughts about the guy's body.

How in the world did Maggie ever match up with him? Jess was also beginning to question exactly what sort of dating app she used to find him. She brushed that thought aside for the moment.

At some point, the volume of the music and the chatter in the place kicked up another notch. Jess noted the increasingly perturbed look on Waylon's face due to the noise.

She was also past the point of worry about Maggie and moving towards fed up. She obviously had succumbed to cold feet.

"You want to go?" Waylon said, nodding his head aside.

At first, she wasn't sure if she heard him right over the clamour of the lounge, but then it dawned on her what he was asking. She hadn't thought that far ahead, leaving with this guy she had just met.

He curled a finger toward her and spoke into her ear as she leaned forward. "There's a bar around the corner. Quiet. Might be more our speed."

Jess tilted her head and rubbed her teeth together aware that she was probably looking a little bit like she was caught in the headlights.

Waylon's cool smile and gaze held steady upon her invitingly.

"Um, hmm..." she finally uttered her non-answer. She looked aside then back at him. Pointing aimlessly, she said, "I just have to go to the washroom for a sec."

"Sure," he said.

Jess stood and rushed through the crowded room. Each time she brushed against a person as she pushed her way past raised her anxiety level. By the time she entered the washroom, she was feeling dizzy. She hurried to the sink, clutched the counter and let out a huff of air.

Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, she groaned. After taking a moment to regain her breath, she muttered repeatedly to herself, "What are you doing? What are you doing?"

She closed her eyes and said aloud. "Mags, you better have not been hiding in here this entire time!"

No one answered. Where the hell did she go?

Jess leaned hard against the counter and stared at herself in the mirror. A flushed-faced woman in dull clothes and an out-of-place silk choker gazed accusingly back at her reminding her that she was a mother of a pre-schooler with professional deadlines who still had a babysitter who was on the clock. Not to mention that she had just spent the last twenty minutes lying to a complete stranger about who she was.

She took a deep breath then told herself, "You're not actually going to do this."

When she finally left the washroom, she still wasn't sure exactly what it was she wasn't going to "do".

As she waded back through the crowded floor, she kept her eyes down. It was only when she neared the front of the place did she happen to glance up. She stopped and blinked, surprised to spot Maggie at another table off in a corner. Her friend was looking unexpectedly jovial, having a lively conversation with some guy.

"What the fu... frick?" Jess grumbled, frowning and psychically burning a little hole into her missing friend's grinning face.

She was about to march over to Maggie when someone grabbed her by her elbow. It was Waylon, appropriately wearing a beaten leather jacket.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Uh," Jess hesitated, mouth agape, before looking back toward Maggie. Her friend tossed her head back, laughing and touching her throat where her constricting choker should have been. She looked confoundedly carefree.