She looked up as I arrived by the bar. “Sunny! I didn’t think it was true, but here you are.”
I forced a smile. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here? You’re a tough woman to track down.”
She moved her purse so I could sit down beside her.
“Do you want some wine?”
I reluctantly took a seat on the bar stool next to her. “I’m good, thanks.”
She tilted her glass in my direction. “I’ll drink for both of us, then,” she said. “Cheers.”
Then she gave me a large smile, looked around.
“So this is where people hide out when their world turns on them. Paradise.”
Some people’s paradise. Some people’s old hell. Whatever, I didn’t correct her.
“How are you doing?” she said. “That was some party, huh?”
“I shouldn’t have shown up.”
“Well, if Amber had done that to me, I would have shown up too.”
I cringed. The old me would have let it go. But it seemed wrong now. Amber was terrible and a phony, but she wasn’t guilty of this. She wasn’t guilty of outing me. “I actually think I was wrong about that.”
She looked surprised. “Really? Well, I can’t stand Amber anyway,” she said. “Most people can’t. And seriously, toast?”
I smiled. “You aren’t going to get an argument from me about that,” I said.
She took a sip of her wine. “After you left, I sat down
and talked to Louis. About you, actually.”
I looked up at her. “Is he any less angry?”
“Well, no.” She shook her head. “But it got me thinking about why.”
“I lied about pretty much everything.”
She shrugged. “A lot of people do. That’s what Facebook was made for, right?”
I wasn’t ready to let myself off that easily. “It’s different. I wasn’t tweeting a few friends.”
“So? That’s pretty much par for the course when living a public life these days. There’s no time to tell the truth. Everyone’s the New York Post, posting the catchiest headline they can think of. A little imagination and you can make yourself the story of the day. Even when there’s no real news.”
I looked at her and considered. Was it the same? Was telling a white lie or two on Facebook or Twitter different from lying about everything in your life? Maybe that’s how you lose yourself to it. One small fabricated post at a time. Until your Facebook feed, which looked quite a bit like you when it started, starts to looks like someone you kind of know. Maybe someone you’d rather be.
Julie took a sip of wine.
“Everyone lies. Louis isn’t irritated because you did. He’s irritated because he thought you weren’t. He’s irritated because you were so convincing. He’s irritated because he thought you were authentic.”
I thought about that. She had a point. The hard part was trying to convince Louis now that who he was to me—who we were to each other—hadn’t been part of the fallacy. He had mattered to me. He mattered still.
“But here’s the thing,” she said, leaning in with a smile. “I actually think you are authentic.”
“I’m not following.”