She Lies

She was not sure how she let the situation get this out of hand.  She knew it was her fault, and that at this point if he did not go down for it. She would.  

Unfortunately, he was not the reason they were in this situation. No, that was her fault too.   

The insecurity inside her, morphed her into a selfish monster. All it took was one wrong glance from the woman at the grocery store, and she lost it.  

She'd pressed charges on an innocent person. She pretended to be the victim, after she attacked the nicest guy she knew.

She furiously swung his own baseball bat at  him, while screaming at him for something he didn't do. She was the perpetrator, and he was her victim. 

 Jesse Thompson framed her boyfriend for domestic violence. A hypocrite stared at her from the mirror of her mother’s coffee table, and her blue eyes swam with poignant apprehension. 

She was despicable. Her violence began three weeks into their courtship, and even at his absolute worst, he never compared to her terribleness. 

Jesse felt bad for Riley.  She'd never meant to let this happen, but once the monster took over there was nothing she could do.  

Something inside of her snapped, and the compulsive stories that sang from her fibbing lips made her want to vomit. Still, she couldn't stop herself from telling her tall tales.

The troublemaker of the family, and the biggest gossiper in town. Jess could not keep her trap shut if you paid her too. That's what made it so hard for her not to cave, and tell the truth. Because this time her lies came at a price, her life or his. 

Why hadn’t she learned to have some self control?

"Jesse, I really think you should see someone." Her mother handed her a cup of hot tea, and sat behind her on an expensive couch. The type of furniture Jesse would never be able to afford on her own. 

The embarrassment she caused her parents was blatant. They disapproved of her behavior, and loathed her excuses. Mr. Thompson and Mrs. Thomspon tried to discipline their only daughter, but nothing worked.

Jesse liked attention, it gave her the excitement she needed to get through her daily life.  Whether she was picking a fight with her coworker, or being the most difficult part of her boss’s day.  Jesse compulsively stirred up tension.  

She experienced a roadblock when she tried getting a job after her last experience at Beatrice's Closet. She stole money from the register, and wore a pair of unpurchased earrings out of the store. 

"Jesse, can you hear me?" Her mother pulled her back to reality with quick alarming snaps. Her beige painted fingernails brushed the tip of her nose.

"Yes," She gave her mother a conflicted stare. 

"If you can't talk to us you need to talk to someone." The advice registered slowly, Jesse processed the words carefully. 

"I'll go see someone." Another lie, but at least this lie wasn't hurting anyone.  

"Dr. Burns, he's a nice man. If you schedule an appointment with him, I'll take you." 

"Sure,"  

****

His parents posted his bond last night, however he still felt like he was sitting in a cold cell. Staring through the bars, glaring at the gray wall, regretting the last month of his life.  Instead, he was resting in a spare recliner in his parent’s living room, trying to calm the rush of emotions threatening to destroy him.

He couldn't believe the mess he'd sunk himself into this time. His father drove home quietly, not mentioning a single word of his private opinions. He expressed his emotions as if he were a robot, and concealed everything he was thinking. As for his mother, she lost her mind the day they slung cuffs around his wrists. 

He came from a middle class family in Nebraska. His mother was a registered nurse, and his father was a lawyer. They were not wealthy, but they were modest, and lived just as well as anyone else. He’d grown up playing baseball with his classmates, until he hit high school, where his playing took a much more serious turn. 

Baseball was fun for him, but to make a career out of it seemed too ambitious. He never wanted to rely on his beloved sport for an income, just because there was room for injury. 

Yet, when he played he dominated the field. He was always the first pick.  Coaches, and his peers fought to secure his position on their teams. His junior year granted him local celebrity when they published him in the newspaper for pitching the state tournament. His newfound fame made his senior year a blurry blast. 

After high school, he played college ball, signing a contract with the Cubs, and  everything seemed perfect. Life seemed just right.

Then one night, while he was partying with his team mates. He laid eyes on a girl dancing on the bartop. She was very pretty. She had one of those faces that suckered in hopeless men from a mile away. 

Her arms swooned above her long bouncy curls, as her hips rocked to a sensual beat. The bar lights flashed sporadically across her face, granting her viewers a peek of her intoxicated smile. The perfume of rum and strawberry cupcake wafted from her skin to his nose, sending a shiver down his back. 

He cringed at the flashback, his gut clenching in a nauseated knot. 

He had six days,  that was one-hundred-forty-four-hours to maintain and prove his innocence. Could he do it?

His eyes carefully slinked over to his father, the shell of their relationship before all this legal mess, haunted Riley. 

How could he persuade an entire courtroom that Jesse was lying, if he could not manage to harness his father’s faith in him?

He’d never felt this low in his life, and the frustrated tears that threatened to dampen his eyes pushed a wretched sigh out of him. He slid forward, propping his elbows on his knees, as he hung his head. 

The floor mocked him, chuckling at his miserable expense as he harshly tugged on his hair. One night cost him his entire life. His stomach revolted at his reality, and the ankle monitor wrapped around his lower calf subjected him to claustrophobia. 

“Your lawyer called, he said to avoid leaving the house, and do not give any public statements. If  you need something you let me know.” He was expecting the words to come from his mother, but it was his father speaking to him this time. 

Maybe he did not believe his son was an abusive boyfriend, after all. 

“Thanks, Dad,” For just a moment, he wished that he was fifteen again. When his parents had the power to make  conundrums like these disappear.

But he was an adult, an adult that mixed himself up with the wrong person. Some higher power decided  it was time for him to pay the price. His parents told him to be careful of who he allowed around him, and for someone like Riley, that was good advice. Riley was not good at keeping trouble at bay.   If trouble was in a five mile radius, it’d race to find Riley, not resting until he was located. 

That was one thing that he shared with Jesse, they were both reckless. Yet, he was never so reckless to wind up in a situation like this. He felt ill-prepared, misinformed, and downright confused. 

He had six days to figure out what to do, or he’d spend the rest of his life regretting that one night he danced with the devil.

***

The air conditioner buzzed loudly in the quiet, but freezing room. People of all backgrounds, properly sat in the benches lined up in rows, all of them wearing formal clothes. While everyone waited for the hearing to start, officers guarded the exits of the room.

A woman sat alone, yet she was still among a field of blandly clothed people.  She stuck out like a sore thumb, her maroon shirt was stained, and her black jacket was tattered.  She looked like a mouse hanging from the drooling mouth of a rabid cat, her wide eyes frantically roamed the courtroom. Avoiding the other side of the room as if it were contaminated with the plague. 

Her heart fell out of her chest, into the cavity of her abdomen. None of this would be happening right now, had she not reported the fabricated incident to the police.

Cameramen lined the sidewalks outside, while fans gathered to either condemn or support the ball player. A giant angry mob of energized people, hollering statements specifying the definition of justice, and screaming for the attention of the reporters.

There was absolutely no going back now. 

She’d portrayed one of America’s favorite ball players as a deadbeat abuser, when in reality, no one had used the term “abuse” in the same sentence with Riley ever. 

At the time, she’d assumed no one knew of Mr. Riley Eubanks. That was not the case.  Just because she did not know him, did not mean the rest of America was just as clueless. So, she’d accidentally framed a celebrity. Not just any ordinary Joe down the street, like she originally thought. Nope, Jesse went straight for the big guns, and framed someone that had entirely hid his true identity  from her.

She could puke all over the burly woman with the pink hat sitting in front of her. She was definitely going to go to jail.

There was no way out, but to tell the truth. Maybe if she gave up the lie now, they’d slap her with a shorter sentence. 

She expected them to come back to investigate her story, but they never did.  They had minimal evidence against him. The only evidence they obtained were lies, but they never returned to talk to her.  

Her demeanor was conspicuous, she had no way of hiding the nerves she felt, and the way she wore her expressions on her face made the defendant feel a little bit better. 

The prosecutor was late.  The unhappy man sitting in the front of the room with the frown of an old dog dragging his lips, made the contents of her stomach luridly flip. He glared at her, like he could sniff the lies before they left her mouth. She felt like a little girl being scolded by her parents, yet her parents never had the ability to terrify her like this. If they had, maybe she wouldn’t need such harsh consequences to learn her lesson.  

She was afraid to give Riley any attention. Afraid that he might try to speak to her.  

She couldn't fathom anything to say to him. She felt bad, but struggled to admit her fault.  

She was purely motivated by her self-interest, her lies were intended to keep the truth about her concealed.  If she told the truth, she’d avoid wasting her time, and the rest of theirs.

The pictures of her fake injuries blinded everything else from her vision, as she blankly gazed off in space. A black eye, a busted lip, and a bruised brow bone. All self-inflicted pain.  The swelling of her eyebrow was still obvious, which probably reflected the situation negatively.  What did she stand to gain from her incredulous handiwork?

A prison sentence this time, or maybe a defamation lawsuit, since she’d trashed his reputation. The managers of his team had already asked him to resign from his current position, which made her feel like Satan himself. 

The need to lie herself out of the situation gave her so much anxiety, she could not sit still in her seat. She bit her tongue several times to slow herself down from doing anything excessively rash. Reminded herself that she was the reason why, any of this was happening, and told herself to breathe. 

She was not the one that was on the brink of losing her career. The only thing she stood to lose was her freedom, meanwhile Riley would lose everything. 

Could she really go any longer without looking at him? She fought herself to scratch the itch that was entirely too bothersome, to be dealing with in the first place. She vigorously chewed on the inside of her cheek. 

Why had she let that woman control her? She’d done so well hiding her true form from Riley, then all hell broke loose, and she blew her cover. For once, someone had given her a chance, and she paid him back by ruining everything he spent his life working for. 

What in the heck was wrong with her? She deserved some form of punishment for this debacle. She’d spent her life narrowly missing her consequences, and failing to acknowledge her mistakes. She should have admitted to herself, and her family that she had issues that ran much deeper than the surface. 

But she chose to ignore the inner demons that permanently glued themselves to the tops of her shoulders, and she let the problem fester until it was not just a hindrance, but a giant obstacle she would struggle everyday to overcome. 

“Your Honor, I have something to say,” Her mouth flaps open like a pair of jeans that are not zipped and button. Her hands ball into anxious fists, as sweat begins to bead on her forehead, and she finds herself standing up to address the entire court. 

The man that sat a few inches away from her sighed heavily, he glared at the ceiling bored. 

“Excuse me, this is not a stage in the middle of New York City. This is my courtroom, and I'd appreciate it if you sat down,” His brown eyes are watery, like mud that has been pummeled by rain all day, and his voice is colder than the frost bitten air of the room. 

“He is innocent ,” The words fling themselves out of her mouth like she’d just grabbed a baked potato straight from the oven. She shuts her eyes preparing for the court to react, but the room is completely silent.

“Ma'am, please take a seat, the court will decide where the fabrications lie.” His stern tone is obstinate, and he demonstrates his lack of sympathy by shaking his head in aggravation. Maybe he thought the assault really happened, and that led him to the conclusion she might attempt to protect him.  

She was just trying to save him from herself. Although, it was a little to late for that. 

“Your Ho-,” 

“I will have you dismissed from this court, if you cannot follow simple instructions. Now sit, I will not ask again.” What would happen if she did disobey him?

If he threw her out did that mean she was still in trouble?

She takes his order as a cue to sit back down, and she cringes at the sound of  her voice as it echoes in her head.

She looks awful. Her blonde hair is matted into a nasty ball in a makeshift bum. Her makeup is crackly, and almost non-existent. Her clothes are as ratty as she is, with holes at the bottom of her jeans from walking on the denim. There are skinny slashes in her shirt like she wrestled with a cougar. 

She was a jealous-lying-stealing-no-good-woman, and for once she was prepared to face the fate she dealt herself. She might not have picked the cards, but she played them to her advantage.

“The court is now in session,”

Her mind was far from the room, even though she desperately wanted to pay attention, her brain kept dragging her off in another direction. And she couldn’t get the voices in her head to settle down long enough for her to catch what the attorneys were saying.

“We do not have an opening statement,” She recognized the prosecutor's voice before she saw him toss his briefcase on the table in front of him. 

“Alright, Mr. Taylor?” 

“Yes, your honor. We  will proceed here in just a moment,” She abandons her efforts to avoid the defendant, and gawks at her former lover for a few moments.

When she first met him, one of the first things she liked about him was the way he glowed with radiance. There was nothing radiant about him now. He seemed to have lost a minimum of fifteen pounds, his skin seemed depraved of vitamin D, and his eyes sank into his face like a corpse. Bags that were non-existent before, hung from under his eyelids, and a giant gash streched across his forehead. 

Her heart squeezed in the chambers of her chest, and she fought back her whirlwind of emotions.  

This was all your fault, the nasty voice in her head cursed her.   

What were you thinking when you told that officer your boyfriend beat you up? Her heart hammered, as her mind raced down the track of disparaging guilt.  

Her ears worked, but her mind was dominating all of her senses. No matter how hard she tried to pay attention to the criminal trial occurring right in front of her. It was impossible for her to comprehend anything. She could not see the people in front of her, all she could see were the memories of her lying.    

The despondency she experienced blanketed her soul, and she appeared emotionless compared to her behavior hours before when the hearing began.  

The only thing that registered as the foreman read the verdict, was the several strangled cries exasperating from the other side of the room. 

Her cold eyes strayed back to her victim, and he peered back with a blank expression. As if he were saying, "Why did you do this to me?", she flinched away. Breaking her cool facade, as their gazes continued to clash.  He never looked away, not even when the door shut in his face.