The Ugly Truth

[Monty Pendleton]

There were only so many dinner invitations Monty could decline before his mother began to suspect something. She would have been right to think he didn't want to see her, and he had no desire to put himself in the position of having to lie. So he went. The dinner was as awkward as he'd expected it to be, their evening conversation pleasant, but stilted, their compliments forced and insincere. Perhaps Liselle meant the things she said, but Monty certainly didn't. The worst of it all was that he didn't even know why he felt so hostile and bitter. Not until later in the evening, sat in the living room, when suddenly it came to him. "You lied to me." His voice was even, steady, the remark offered more like a question than a statement, but the anger was rising in him at a speed he knew he ought to be alarmed at.

 

[Liselle Pender]

Something was wrong. Liselle didn't need to be a psychologist to figure that much out. Monty had been behaving strangely all evening, hardly meeting her eye, offering only the simplest answers to her questions, as if he didn't trust her with the truth - or didn't consider her worthy of his time. It was so bizarre that over the course of the evening she grew increasingly nervous, until suddenly he said something that made her heart skip a beat. "What? No," she said, genuinely confused, though she had a sickening suspicion that whatever he thought she'd lied about, she really had. Why else would he sound so sure? "Why would you say that? What's going on?"