He Could See My Comments, I Used Them To Tease Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Truth Count

Day one of the game: two lies and a truth. Griffin guesses wrong and opens a tally. Camille films them from a window.

The rules of the game were set in the Perk Up Coffee House at four o'clock on Wednesday, and Beau Tennant was the referee.

Nobody had asked Beau to be the referee.

Griffin had told him it was a study group thing, and Beau had decided that meant he was in charge of the napkin.

"Scoreboard," Beau said, and drew a line down the middle of it with a stubby pencil.

"Why do we need a scoreboard?" I asked.

"Because Griffin said so, and I don't ask questions before four-thirty."

Griffin sat across from me with his phone out and his thumb over a blank note.

"One true thing," he said. "Five comments, one true, sandwiched. I guess which one."

"And if you guess wrong?"

"I buy your coffee."

"And if you guess right?"

"We said I'd think of something."

"That's not a rule. That's a threat."

"It's a rule with some room in it," Griffin said.

I tapped my thigh, slowly, and let him watch the words float up.

"The geese on the river have a union and it's strong."

Griffin read it, and his eyebrow went up.

"The coffee here is forty percent gravel."

Beau looked at his coffee, and then at the ceiling, and then wrote something on the napkin.

I took a breath and typed the third one so fast my knee jumped.

"I like it when he laughs."

Then I kept going before it could sit there alone.

"The river is fake and nobody told the geese."

"I have never once seen a swan."

I put my hands on the table and looked innocent.

Griffin read them all in order with the care of a man defusing a bomb.

"Say something out loud," he said. "So I can think."

"Thinking is not part of the rules."

"Fine."

He narrowed his eyes at the air above my head.

"It's the geese," he said at last.

"Pick again."

"I can only guess once."

"Then it's the geese."

I let him sit with it for three full seconds.

"Eeeeeehhhh," Beau said, in a voice like a game show buzzer. "Wrong. The geese are a lie."

"How would you know?" Griffin said.

"Because geese don't have unions, man. Everyone knows that."

"I don't think she'd lie about geese," Griffin said.

"She lies about everything," Beau said. "That's the whole game."

I drank my coffee in a satisfied silence.

Griffin took his phone out and tapped it with his thumb.

I leaned over to look.

The note was titled TRUTH COUNT, and beneath it, in small plain letters, was one line.

"0 of 1."

"You're really keeping a list," I said.

"I said I would."

"You're going to be disappointed."

"I'm going to be at zero for a while, I think," Griffin said. "But I'm patient."

The barista called an order.

Beau stood up to get it, and the two of us were left alone at the table with the napkin between us.

Griffin lowered his voice.

"Which one was it?"

"That's not allowed."

"I paid for the coffee."

"You paid for one coffee. That doesn't buy a confession."

He nodded, a little too easily.

"I can tell you which one it wasn't," he said.

"You're not supposed to tell me what you think."

"I think it wasn't the gravel."

"You're guessing again."

"I'm guessing again for free," he said. "It's a different game."

I looked at my hands.

I did not look at him, and I did not look at the napkin, and I did not look at the part of the air where the third comment had hung for a moment before the lies buried it.

I like it when he laughs.

It was true, which was the annoying part.

I had liked it in the library, when it rolled across the quiet floor and made everyone turn around.

I had liked it so much that I had spent a whole day pretending I hadn't.

"What's wrong?" Griffin asked.

"Nothing's wrong."

"You went quiet."

"I'm thinking about geese," I said.

He smiled, a small private one that didn't reach the rest of the table.

Beau came back with the coffees and put them down.

"So what's the score?" he said.

"Nothing to zero," Griffin said.

"Who's winning?"

"Ask me in a month."

I turned to look out the window, so nobody would see my face.

The window faced the quad, and on the far side of the glass someone was standing by the notice board.

It was Camille Doran, with her blazer and her clipboard, and her phone held up in front of her.

She waved when she saw me looking.

I waved back, and she smiled the way she had smiled in the library, warm and a little shy.

The camera on the back of it was pointed at our table.

I thought, she must be checking her calendar.

I turned back to my coffee and tapped one more lie, because the day was still young.

"Griffin is the goose in charge."

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